By Josh Mitchell
Friday, July 30, 2004
Hollywood star Nancy Stafford, who played Andy Griffith's law partner in the 1980s television series Matlock, won a $250,000 ruling this week against an investment firm she accused of fraud. And in a made-for-TV twist, her former broker has fled to Israel, with the FBI in hot pursuit, Stafford's attorney claims.
Stafford, a former Miss Florida who now writes Christian inspirational books, flew in from Los Angeles for the five-day hearing before an arbitration panel in Boca Raton last week.
The Fort Lauderdale-born actress testified that the brokerage firm Janney Montgomery Scott duped her into sham investments by misrepresenting their value and financial backing. She and her pastor husband asked for $500,000 in their claim.
In one alleged scam, the couple sank $150,000 in a startup cellphone company that they claim was run by the broker's best friend. The Boca Raton-based broker, Zvi Zim, promised fourfold profits, but the couple lost everything. Zim was fired in 2002 over unrelated allegations.
"He made up so many tales," Stafford, 50, said Thursday from her California ranch.
The brokerage firm claims otherwise. In court documents, attorneys portrayed Stafford and her husband as typical greedy investors who took high risks and sued for damages when their gambles didn't pay off.
"Claimants did not complain when the market was doing well," attorneys wrote, adding that Stafford and her husband were inventing a claim "to recoup market losses that they voluntarily assumed." Attorneys for Janney Montgomery Scott could not be reached for further comment Thursday.
Stafford's attorney, Robert Pearce of Boca Raton, said it would be a "waste of time" to try to locate and sue Zim, who faces other accusations that he misused clients' money for shoddy investments.
"He just got deeper and deeper into it and finally his whole world came crashing down on him," Pearce said.
For Stafford, the hearing might have saved her life. She learned on Tuesday that wildfires had ravaged much of her 25-acre ranch, which she and her husband operate as a religious retreat about 70 miles north of Los Angeles.
The former star of the Emmy-winning St. Elsewhere, who is also a TV spokeswoman for City Furniture, visits Fort Lauderdale several times a year to see her mother, Marcia Stafford, and brother, Tracy Stafford, a former state representative.
"I just don't like confrontation," Stafford said. "I'm glad I was an actor as a lawyer because I could never have been (a real) one."
The Law Offices of Robert Wayne Pearce
Attorneys at Law
1499 West Palmetto Park Road
Suite 300
Boca Raton, Florida 33486
Phone: (561) 338-0037
Toll-Free: (800) 732-2889
Fax: (561) 338-9310
