Man Convicted Of Cheating Family Of Missing Woman, Amy Bradley...
Slimpickins
Slim
Guilty plea in cruise-ship case
Man defrauded woman's family
BY TOM CAMPBELL
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Apr 10, 2002
The man accused of cheating the family of the missing Amy Bradley by
pretending he was close to finding her pleaded guilty yesterday to mail
fraud in U.S. District Court.
At sentencing Aug. 22, Frank V. Jones Jr. of Atlanta could face up to five
years in prison, a $250,000 fine and an order to make full restitution.
Authorities say he defrauded $24,444 from Bradley's family in Chesterfield
County and $186,416 from the Nation's Missing Children Organization, which
established a fund with donations to the find-Amy effort. For about two
years he faked search and rescue operations and collected fees for them.
"What he's done to our family is horrible and has caused a lot of misery,"
said Amy's mother, Iva N. Bradley, after court yesterday.
She and her husband, Roland L. Bradley, lamented also the time they have
lost from the search for Amy while putting their trust and money into the
phony efforts Jones was making.
Restoration of the money would let them start searching again, Roland
Bradley said. Neither Amy's parents nor her brother, Brad Bradley, nor other
members of her family and its circle of friends have given up hope of
finding Amy.
At 23, she disappeared during a family cruise as the ship approached port in
Curacao, an island off Venezuela. That was March 1998; her parents and
brother have been trying to find her ever since.
Jones' plea agreement calls for additional restitution of $197,500 to Susan
G. Lukins of Texas. According to statements in a previous hearing in the
case, Jones persuaded Lukins to invest in his company, ODC Consulting Ltd.
Iva Bradley said Jones approached the family in 1999 based on his
acquaintance with a private investigator the Bradleys had previously
employed. He later told them he was a former U.S. Army Special Forces
officer and ran a firm that employed former military people in special
operations, security, hostage rescue and the like.
In fact, according to testimony and a statement he filed with his plea,
Jones, 42, had been an Army Reserve staff officer for about 15 years but had
no Special Forces experience.
Jones said he and his operatives could find Amy, and he got the Bradleys'
$24,444 to start the search. Authorities said he sent two men to Curacao,
but they found nothing.
However, Jones falsely told the Bradleys he sent two teams to Curacao. He
said his men sighted Amy and engaged in a firefight with her captors. He
said some of his employees were wounded and several captors were killed.
Subsequent reports from Jones said her captors had moved her to a new
location.
In June 2000, Jones sent the Bradleys photographs he said were surveillance
photos of Amy and one of her captors on a beach in Curacao. In fact, Jones
made the pictures in Pensacola, Fla., and the people in the pictures were
acquaintances of Jones.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
Dennis
Slimpickins <Sl...@work.com> wrote in message
news:Jdot8.18507$Rw2.1...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Dennis
_ _ _ _ _
Q. "What do you think when you see a pretty girl walking down the street?"
A. "One side of me says, 'I'd like to talk to her, date her.' The other side
of me says, 'I wonder how her head would look on a stick?'"
EDMUND KEMPER
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ---
>
>
>