When Orange County's Cindy Ball of Cypress began to battle a severe illness in 2005 she turned her finances over to her brother and expected honesty.
After all, Bob Silverman isn't just Ball's brother. He's a pastor at Empowering Life Church in Bedford, Texas.
And, according to the church's website, “members truly try to live what the Bible has taught them.” Members also join “Army of God squads” and socialize with other “credible Christians.”
But Silverman, 61, had a few secrets.
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In an unstable marriage, he'd run up more than $17,500 in credit card debt and apparently couldn't pay with his own money.
During a three-year period Silverman converted $771,291 of his disabled sister's money for his own use, according to a Texas judge, who says that Silverman violated the Texas Theft Liability Act and must also pay $50,000 for Ball's attorney and $12,738 in interest.
“He flew in [from Texas] and met with our family and convinced them he could take care of me,” Ball–a former cosmetics saleswoman–
told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram this week. “I was depressed, and I believed him because he had always taken care of me.”
Claiming his innocence, Silverman is planning an appeal.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
