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David Hernandez: Life and crimes of a hustler
June 20, 2009
Gone 'missing'
David Hernandez is gone. Wanted by the FBI. Again.
His wife reported him missing on Monday after federal authorities alleged in a civil lawsuit that the Downers Grove man masterminded a Ponzi scheme that snaked nearly $12 million from 100 investors in 12 states.
Federal mail fraud charges and a warrant for Hernandez's arrest quickly followed.
The case laid out by the FBI and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission -- which also names Hernandez's wife, Gina Hernandez, as a defendant -- includes records that allegedly show Hernandez used investor cash to pay off his mortgage, lavish his family with gifts, dine at fancy restaurants, throw elegant parties and help Chicago sports talk radio blabbermouth Mike North start up an Internet radio station, Chicago Sports Webio.
One of Hernandez's companies, NextStep Medical Staffing, was the main sponsor for North's "Monsters in the Morning" sports talk show with Dan Jiggetts on Comcast SportsNet Chicago. He also owned a majority stake in Webio, which was North's idea.
Hernandez was a "Score-head" who North says he met years ago at several remote broadcasts of his former radio show on the Score, WSCR-AM (670).
In the mid-1990s, North and his wife, Be-Be, refinanced their mortgage using a broker recommended by Hernandez.
Last year, North said Hernandez approached him about putting up the startup cash for now-defunct Webio and sponsoring the Comcast show.
With big-name broadcasters including Chet Coppock and Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini on the air, Webio seemed to be taking off.
Everything changed about three weeks ago, when Webio payroll checks started bouncing and Hernandez stopped returning calls, said North, who Hernandez fired from the sports talk Web site on June 12.
By then, Hernandez and his companies were already the target of a federal probe thanks to NextStep investor Fred Samp of Deer Park.
Samp, who says he got scammed out of more than $150,000, blew the whistle after he stopped receiving dividend checks -- which up until then paid 15 percent on his investment each month, he said.
Hernandez, twice a convicted felon, told people they were buying "guaranteed investment contracts" promising returns of 10 percent to 16 percent per month from payday lending investments.
Turns out, those dividends were likely just other investors' cash, according to court documents.
Hernandez lied about having an MBA and a law degree. He didn't disclose that he filed bankruptcy three times. In fact, NextStep was a defunct company with no operations other than the fraudulent investment scam, federal prosecutors say.
If North didn't make such a stink when those payroll checks started to bounce, Hernandez's alleged Ponzi scheme might not have gotten as much media attention.
After all, the last time Hernandez scammed people out of money and ran from the feds it didn't make headlines.
Meet Mr. Hernandez
David John Hernandez, 48, grew up in Cicero with five brothers and sisters.
His mother, the late Mary Christelle, split time between three jobs. She worked at a La Grange doughnut shop, a Cicero tavern and Morton East High School, where she was a school matron.
She had little choice. Hernandez's father, Mary Christelle's first husband, split on the family, said her second husband, Bernard Christelle, whom she divorced.
"All the kids had troubles. ... They didn't have a father figure," Christelle said. "The smartest one in the family was David and he turned out to be as rotten as you can be."
Hernandez graduated from Morton East in 1978. He played football and basketball and had a mustache by sophomore year.
Bernard Christelle met Hernandez in the school hallways while working as a receiving clerk years before marrying his mother. Christelle said Hernandez fancied himself as "a big show-off."
"He was always so full of s---," Christelle said. "He was an a------ even back then."
In 1985, Christelle married Hernandez's mother and "grew closer" with Hernandez at first. Then Hernandez conned him out of $4,000 and drove him into bankruptcy, Christelle said.
In 1986, Hernandez's first wife, Donna Hernandez, filed for divorce. He got remarried on Sept. 3, 1988, to Caryn Tannehilll, a teller he met while working at Columbia National Bank at 5250 N. Harlem. The couple had two children.
By February 1993, Hernandez was promoted to vice president of operations. He spent the next three years ripping people off, according to court records.
'Adios,' mommy
As a federal grand jury prepared to charge him with stealing more than $660,000 from bank investors, Hernandez took his mother's car and skipped town with his two daughters on Aug. 4, 1997.
He telephoned his estranged wife from the road and told her that their oldest daughter had a message for mommy.
"Adios," the girl said. Hernandez took back the phone and said, "That's her new language," according to family members who asked to not be identified.
"They were gone for like a week. Almost two weeks. And it caused great trauma to our family," a family member said. "The best thing I can say about him is that he's a good con man."
Police caught up with Hernandez and the girls near Peoria, Ariz. -- four hours from the U.S. border. He was charged with felony child abduction. He pleaded guilty and received two years supervision.
In December 1997, Hernandez was indicted for wire fraud. He would later plead guilty to taking money from Columbia National Bank investors and depositing it in an account under his second wife's name.
Later, Hernandez pocketed the cash using a debit card at automated teller machines, according to court records. His second wife was not charged with wrongdoing.
Just before Hernandez was sentenced to 34 months in jail, five years' supervised release and ordered to repay $590,533 in restitution for wire fraud, his second divorce became final.
The Cook County judge presiding over the split gave Caryn Hernandez all of their marital assets and sole custody of the girls. Judge Daniel Riley had harsh words for Hernandez that would have been a warning to NextStep investors who would cross his path more than a decade later.
"He is intelligent, articulate, clean-cut, polite, appropriately emotional," the judge wrote in the divorce decree. "However, his conduct at trial and prior hearings brings to mind the age-old observation 'that I never met a con man I didn't like' because, notwithstanding his demeanor, the evidence at trial demonstrated that he is a man who will lie, forge documents, disrespect trusts, disregard court orders and manipulate people and events for his own selfish purposes."
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sugatsune. boricuabutch.
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