Laughlin lottery winner talks about son’s stealing ways

KINGMAN, Ariz. — A lottery-enriched multimillionaire from Laughlin is spending Thanksgiving with family in Southern California without any heartache that the youngest of his five children is going to prison after trying to steal his fortune.

Dion Wolfe, 53, was given a four-year prison term Tuesday when sentenced as prescribed in a plea agreement convicting him of two counts of theft for raiding the bank account of his father, Robert Wolfe, 85.

The sentence followed his arrest in Las Vegas.

“I think he deserves more for what he did to me,” the elder Wolfe said Wednesday. “Our family over the years did everything in the world for him, and this is how he paid me back.”

Wolfe said his wife, Marilyn, who died 13 years ago, had to take a job to help pay off the bad-check debt Dion Wolfe incurred while attending college in the mid- to late 1980s. Arizona court records indicate he earned a master’s degree in communications from Purdue University and later was employed as a professor at an unnamed college.

Robert Wolfe said his late wife and Dion Wolfe’s older brother, Roger, played the Ohio lottery for about eight years before they struck it rich in 1991. He said that Roger Wolfe kept his half of a $16 million windfall and that he and his wife opted to collect their $8 million in 26 annual payments of more than $300,000.

“We’ve got three years left,” Robert Wolfe said of the payout.

He also said Dion Wolfe employed every trick in the book to try to get as much of the money as he could over the years.

The father said he gave a lot of money away and wrote checks to several family members but that Dion Wolfe got the most because of “all of his con games.”

Police in Bullhead City, Ariz., across the river from Laughlin, began an investigation in April after Robert Wolfe got a notice that his account was overdrawn at Mohave State Bank. He and his niece Kim Walter, his family representative and caregiver, visited the bank and discovered that several checks totaling $177,500 had been written against the account and cashed in Dion Wolfe’s name between January and April.

Robert Wolfe told police it was then that he realized he hadn’t seen any account statements from the bank in recent months. Investigators learned that Dion Wolfe intercepted them in his father’s mail to stall detection of the scheme.

Bullhead City police concluded that he stole more than $236,000 from his father through the check forgery scheme, electronic fund transfers and credit card fraud.

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Robert Wolfe said of loss at the hands of his son. “The total is closer to $800,000.”

He said he has four lawyers working five cases to locate and retrieve any money or assets acquired through his son’s conniving. One of the lawsuits is pending in Clark County, but Robert Wolfe’s Las Vegas lawyer, Brian Steadman, was unavailable for comment.

Records in the criminal case resolved in Mohave County, Ariz., show that authorities traced overseas transfers totaling some $31,500 that Dion Wolfe deposited in a bank account in Malaysia. Robert Wolfe said his team believes his son has other funds in bank accounts in Nigeria and London.

Dion Wolfe said nothing at his sentencing hearing, though he expressed regret in his presentence statement to a probation officer.

“I’m very remorseful and truly love my dad,” he said. “I know he does not love me.”

He told the probation officer that he took license because his dad refused to take action against another family member who he alleged was getting questionable amounts of money from Robert Wolfe. “I saw this as permission for me to take money that I have in foreign bank accounts.”

Prosecutor Jace Zack and defense attorney Alex Bolobonoff said they have no idea what Dion Wolfe did with any ill-gotten gains. They said that he had no criminal record and there was no indication of substance abuse or gambling problems.

Las Vegas police said he appeared to be homeless and living out of a pillow- and food-filled 1999 Subaru when they arrested him on the Arizona warrant in July at a bank on East Flamingo Road. The bank cooperated with a request to contact police if and when Dion Wolfe showed up to tend to his account.

Before he was arrested, he became the focus of federal attention. Bullhead City police Detective Ed Betts contacted the FBI and ATF out of concern that Dion Wolfe fit behavior patterns as a possible “lone wolf” who might have anti-government leanings.

Betts wrote in police reports about the 13 weapons that were found in Dion Wolfe’s bedroom at his father’s home in Laughlin. The cache included two handguns, two shotguns and nine rifles, one of them an AK-47.

Dion Wolfe’s other bedroom possessions included more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition, military boots, military rifle scopes and camouflaged vests. Police also located business cards from federal law enforcement agencies and a long-sleeve black T-shirt with “POLICE” printed on front and back.

Police reports indicated that a girlfriend who broke up with him in March, a month before the criminal investigation began, told them that Dion Wolfe told associates that he worked for the National Security Agency as part of a special 11-member team that travels the world protecting the nation’s security interests.

Lisa Fairchild also told police that he boasted that he had killed people overseas while working as a secret government agent.

Betts reported he pointed Dion Wolfe out to the feds because of all of these factors, in addition to the overseas monetary transfers and discovery of an Islamic bank card.

“The timing of the acquiring assets occurred so that those assets were in place and available within days of the Boston bombing, the ricin letters and a shooting at a substation in California,” Betts’ report said. “It all has the appearance of someone gearing up for a possible attack, like several others that have recently occurred across the nation.”

Court records show that an FBI agent told Betts in July that the government was unable to confirm any overseas travel by Dion Wolfe.

“Despite all the red flags discovered in the early phases of this investigation there has been no information to link Dion Wolfe to a terrorism nexus,” Betts concluded.

Dion’s last known job was at a small television operation in Laughlin.

Bullhead City Councilman Sam Medrano, also employed at KLBC-TV, said he never got to know him very well.

“He struck me as odd though, I’ll tell you that,” Medrano said. “He talked about his dad and his money an awful lot.”