"Catch Me if You Can"

A stockbroker's get-rich-quick scheme goes sour

I want to be filthy rich," Des Moines

Stockbroker Gary Vance Lewellyn, 33, often told friends, and for a while the curly-haired financier from Humboldt, Iowa (pop. 4,794), made his dreams come true. Lewellyn, who ran a brokerage company in Des Moines, wore custom-made suits that he bought in batches. He lived with his wife and two children in a $200,000 home in a suburb of Des Moines. The family owned a Mercedes-Benz, a BMW, a Chevrolet and a Jeep Wagoneer.

Lewellyn also had plenty of money for Kathryn Barakat, 35, a former hatcheck girl at a local club. He bought her a house and helped her buy a 1981 Cadillac and provided all the funds she wanted. Said she: "He wanted to marry me, and I was kind of dragging my feet, and so he decided to make me a very rich woman so that I could make up my mind and wouldn't have to marry him for money, and I wouldn't have to stay with my present husband because of the lack of it."

On March 31, Lewellyn withdrew $500,000 in $100 bills from the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Co. of Chicago, and vanished from sight. He had parked the Jeep at the Des Moines municipal airport. On the front seat he left two books: the Bible and the autobiography of a reformed check forger entitled Catch Me if You Can.

Lewellyn reportedly tried an old Wall Street scam. Starting last April, he bought up 58% of the shares in Safeguard Scientifics, a Pennsylvania automotive and machine-parts manufacturer, in order to inflate the price. During a 2%-month period this year, he accounted for more than 70% of trading in the stock. In that time its value jumped from about 9 to 16 a share, although last week it closed at 5%.

The broker is said to have bought many shares through accounts opened in the names of Barakat and members of her family. Barakat, who describes herself as Lewellyn's "pampered princess," told Government investigators that she knew nothing of the schemes. Said she: "When a guy buys you Cadillacs and two mink coats and diamond rings, and gives you an unlimited expense account, you kind of think that he has a lot of money."

Lewellyn paid for his stock by borrowing from five leading brokerage firms, including $3.1 million from Merrill Lynch and $16 million from Swiss American Securities, a unit of Zurich's Credit Suisse. He also reportedly misappropriated $2.8 million in Government securities from the First National Bank in Humboldt, where his father was president.

A small army of Government agencies have filed suits against Lewellyn. These include the Securities and Exchange Commission, which charged him with stock manipulation; the FBI, which accused him of embezzlement; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which wants $9 million from Lewellyn and five New York brokerages with which he did business; the IRS, which says he owes $3.2 million in taxes; and the Securities Investor Protection Corp., which may have to reimburse any of Lewellyn's brokerage customers who lost money.

In addition, his wife Dena, 33, has charged her husband with desertion, and last week was named the temporary holder of his property. Merrill Lynch and Swiss American Securities also are suing the missing Lewellyn. In a final family humiliation, Lewellyn's father resigned from his bank, which has now been sold to the Hawkeye Bancorporation, a Des Moines bank holding company.

Old friends and associates were stunned by the charges and reports that he had left behind brokerage debts totaling $22 million. Said Delmar Cram, principal of Humboldt High School, where Lewellyn was once student body president: "It's shocking as heck. Morally, you would have bet your bottom dollar on him." Cram added that Lewellyn was an "ambitious boy with sights set on the stratosphere." The Iowa criminal investigation division and federal agents are not looking quite that far, but they are checking leads in Costa Rica and Hong Kong.

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