A “Missionary Kid” (MK) convicted of using his Baptist connections to scam friends and businesses out of more than $2 million awaits sentencing in August.
Steve Solesbee, son of veteran Southern Baptist missionaries and president of Missionary Kids International Fellowship (MKIF), was found guilty in United States District Court in February on 12 counts of bank fraud, wire fraud and bankruptcy fraud. Sentencing was postponed to give his new attorney time to study the case. During eight days of trial, 50 witnesses portrayed Solesbee as a con artist who used friendship with Baptist missionaries and pastors to bilk people out of their life savings.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Linda Groves called Solesbee a “bust out” artist. She said he bought businesses with worthless promissory notes, looted the assets, stiffed creditors, paid the help with hot checks and then took bankruptcy to prevent repossession.
Solesbee, 51, was born in the Philippines and grew up there while his parents served as Baptist missionaries. As president of MKIF, he promoted a 1996 gathering of MKs in Hawaii. He sold airline tickets and hotel accommodations through his Bonaventure Travel Agency in Dallas to hundreds of people, including the 90-member Ouachita Baptist University Band in Arkadelphia, Ark. Wire transfers of money from Ouachita became the basis for some of the wire fraud charges after Solesbee allegedly put the money in his pocket instead of paying airlines.
Edie Strittmatter of Richland Hills, Texas, auditor and investigator for Airline Reporting Corporation, testified that Solesbee’s now defunct operation fit the pattern of travel-agency bust out. A non-accredited person takes over an accredited business, sells tickets, and then doesn’t pay the airlines. “It happens quickly,” she said. “They get in, get out, take the money and run.”
Barbara Petrella of Lake Dallas, Texas, an accountant for travel agencies, testified Solesbee’s travel agency sold tickets to a July 1996 missionary meeting in Hawaii and one week owed the airlines $324,487.48. The next two weeks he owed $114.627.44 and $71,788.60. She said Airline Reporting drafted on his account, and the money was not there.
He waited until two days before the flights to order the tickets, she said. Then the tickets would be used before the ARC drafted on his account and found the money gone.
Solesbee has taken bankruptcy nine times since 1982 and operated businesses from Florida to Hawaii.
Sylvia Green, a pianist at Grand View Baptist Church in Dallas for most of the past 47 years, said Solesbee “gained my confidence and trust, and I told him about my dad, a poor Mississippi farmer who had sold his land and got a good sum of money for it. I was his old-maid daughter, missionary to Texas, and he left me that money.”
She told Solesbee about having the money in certificates of deposit that were making less than 4 percent interest. He told her to invest with him and she could make 12 percent. He said he would personally guarantee the safety of her investment, and she could get the money back any time she needed it. She lost $79,000.
George Swan of Bedford, Texas, was a missionary in Mexico for 14 years. He now teaches third grade in Irving, Texas, and is pastor of a Spanish-language church in Hurst, Texas. He testified that he worked for Solesbee, managing a telephone-answering service in Conroe, Texas, in 1996. He said he sold a house and loaned Solesbee the $37,000 he got for it. Swan said he never got his money back, nor was he paid for working.
FBI Special Agent Randy Horton testified that he had been investigating Solesbee since 1997, when an attorney for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court discovered Solesbee had taken bankruptcy without reporting his true financial condition. This led to charges of bankruptcy fraud, wire fraud and bank fraud.
Robert Fordham, financial planner and certified public accountant from Atlanta, said he met Solesbee in 1998 through his wife’s parents, who were missionaries. Fordham loaned Solesbee $3,500, which later witnesses said was repaid with money Solesbee had borrowed from other people with the understanding it was to buy telephone-answering equipment.
Wade Sommer of Hudson, Wis., testified that he became involved with Solesbee in 1998 in Florida, assuming from Solesbee’s trappings, furniture and location that he was a successful businessman. Sommer said he made Solesbee a loan because he had cash-flow problems. Later Sommer made loans to Solesbee, some of which were to buy another answering service in Tallahassee, Fla., in which Sommer was to be a partner.
Continually Solesbee needed money to keep the business afloat, and Sommer gave it to him. Sommer said he did an audit and found that the business in Tallahassee was not as Solesbee had represented it. Solesbee said the problem was that money was not coming in from customers. Sommer found that the money was coming in and confronted Solesbee.
“He refused to discuss it, … changed the locks and threatened to call the police if I came in,” he said.
Leeann Eck Lewis, whose late husband did a $20,000 remodel of Solesbee’s Fort Myers, Fla., offices, said she went to work for Solesbee because he offered medical insurance benefits. She worked in his office and cleaned his townhouse. The way his home and office were decorated gave the impression he had money to burn, she said.
Although customers were paying, and money was coming in, the office received many phone calls and visits from creditors who where not being paid, she said. Then her husband died, and she learned that she had no insurance to pay his medical bills. She had received an insurance card, she said, but only the first month’s premium had been paid.
Linda Jenkins of Atlanta said Solesbee purchased Cascade Communications answering service from her and her mother, Grace Clark, in 1997 for $49,043, and the equipment for $15,000, none of which was paid. Solesbee hired armed guards to keep her and her mother from entering the business to demand payment.
Solesbee was convicted of fraud for supplying a false financial statement to buy luxurious residential property in Dallas in 1995, then declaring bankruptcy to prevent foreclosure, intentionally omitting five other debts from his bankruptcy filing and lying about it under oath.
Another count was bank fraud for writing a no-account check for more than $7,000 to the City of Dallas for property taxes while knowing the bank account had been closed.
He operated under the names Answer USA, William S. Solesbee Special Trust, Galloway Special Trust, McKinney Communications, American Messaging Centers, Bonaventure Travel Agency, Stephens Communications, Inc., American Answering Service, Inc., Presidents Travel, Inc., Imperial Tours, VIP Answering Service and Amalgamated America. (ABP)
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