To some people, she was known as Christine Chandler, a successful California interior designer who was relocating her business to Denver.
Others thought Christine Chandler was a successful and savvy Malibu real-estate agent who had just moved to Denver after being awarded $8 million in a divorce settlement.
In reality, prosecutors said Chandler was Christine Speros, 48, a con artist.
A Denver jury took just three hours Friday to convict Speros of eight counts of theft, eight counts of criminal impersonation and one count of unauthorized use of a financial transaction device.
Her bright personality, her ability to talk like an interior designer and her claims of personal wealth resulted in banks, associates and businesses being bilked out of $150,000 in a matter of months, prosecutors Melanie Names and Ken Laff said Friday.
During the closing arguments, Names said Speros was a “person who lived an elaborate double life.
“She tricked bankers and business associates,” Names said. “Defense counsel claims she had a legitimate interior design business. This isn’t a case about style, it is about stealing. It isn’t about design but about deception.”
As far as her design business, Speros claimed she had $1.2 million in sales and $625,000 in assets.
She opened checking accounts at Compass Bank, Key Bank, Washington Mutual Bank and Bank One – all of which soon ran into trouble when there wasn’t enough money to cover the checks she wrote.
She leased expensive trucks; bought rugs, flower arrangements, furniture and other merchandise from a host of businesses – with most of her checks bouncing, prosecutors said.
But Michael Vallejos, Speros’ lawyer, claimed that prosecutors simply wanted to stymie Speros’ venture into the free-enterprise system.
They looked at Speros through a “lens of suspicion” that was unfair, Vallejos said.
“It was a business that didn’t work. That’s not theft,” Vallejos said. “This is a talented designer. She is doing design work.”
But Laff told the jury Speros wasn’t the victim. The victims were all those “left holding the bag,” he said.
“They supported Miss Speros’ lifestyle. She had the trappings of business. That’s how she looks – like a businesswoman so she can take people’s money. The trappings don’t matter. The actions matter,” Laff said.
The jury wasn’t told she had federal convictions for bank and tax fraud in Arizona in the early 1990s. More recently in a 1998 Jefferson County case, she swindled people out of $30,000 and a year later in Denver she embezzled $50,000 from an oil and gas company. Those charges resulted in state and federal prison terms.
She could be sentenced to another 294 years next month, although it is likely the sentence will be substantially lower.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-820-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
