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Sunday, September 22, 2002

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

STATE COLLEGE -- Raymond Larkin was quite the salesman.

"Slick" is how customer Cathy Tennis recalls him.

"Throw him on a used-car lot," said Chris Weaver, a State College police detective, "and people would've been flying off the lot with cars."

Maybe Larkin could have been one of the greats, up there next to the Ronco pitchman on the peddlers' Mount Rushmore. But something separates him from the legends of the sales game.

He wasn't actually selling anything.

He just said he was. And he collected lots of money, police say.

Larkin, 39, of Hackensack, N.J. , fresh from 30 days in jail back home, said he was working with blessings from inside Penn State University. Police say he traded on the panache in the Penn State name and ran an energetic flimflam this summer.

At the same time, police say, Larkin sold advertising for a brochure that didn't exist and scammed his way into a month of free lodging at hotels.

And for the coed he recruited to hustle around town, selling his ads, a promised $1,000 paycheck isn't in the mail. Larkin, pretending to be a higher-up in his operation, phoned after the unsuspecting woman reeled in thousands of dollars in ads, saying that the woman was classified as a trainee -- and that trainees don't get paid.

"He was just smooth," said Tennis, co-owner of a towing business that paid Larkin $199 for an ad.

Last week, Larkin waived a preliminary hearing in Centre County and faces trial on four counts of theft and one of receiving stolen property. Police say that he hoaxed his victims out of $5,579 in goods and services.

By the time the last victim comes forward, though, the loss could top $20,000, Weaver said, adding that investigators were trying to unravel Larkin's background to see whether he worked the same racket elsewhere.

Larkin is free on bail and couldn't be reached for comment. His public defender, Patrick Klena, refused comment.

Police say the scam started June 5, during Penn State's summer term, when Larkin -- using the name Larry Miller -- walked into the Undergraduate Student Government office on campus.

He said he represented an ad agency with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere. He wanted to produce 40,000 free brochures, packed with advertising and campus life information, and distribute them at Penn State.

Larkin's claim was bunk, police say.

"He's a one-man operation. He offers corporate locations that don't exist," Weaver said. "But he has the spiel down."

Nevertheless, Larkin talked student government Vice President Kristopher Ankarlo into writing him a letter, on student government letterhead, introducing Larkin and his plan to potential customers. It was added to a file Larkin carried of 40 similar endorsements from other schools.

"They looked genuine," Weaver said.

And the scam was off and running.

"That Penn State name was like a seal of approval for him," Weaver said.

Alter ego Larry Miller was rebuffed by the local Hampton Inn manager in a bid to barter ads for a free room. So Larkin returned later, this time using his own name, and convinced hotel underlings that he had been approved for free lodging.

When the manager found out and ordered him to pay his bill and leave, Larkin ran out on a $570 tab and left the hotel address for his cellular phone bills of at least $238, police say.

The Residence Inn was more hospitable, taking Larkin's ads-for-lodging offer but winding up out $944 in room and phone bills, according to the arrest affidavit.

On July 2, State College police figured they caught up to Larkin at the Hotel State College, where he worked another room-for-advertising pact. But he had cleared out, possibly on the run after Penn State police notified him the day before that they were looking into his operation.

Police traced Larkin to Bergen County, N.J., where they found that when he arrived in State College in June, it was fresh from 30 days in jail on a theft-related probation violation.

If he's convicted, Larkin probably faces jail time here, too, Weaver said. But prosecutors might work a deal to send him to the county jail, not to state prison, if he repays his victims, the detective said.

His tab isn't totaled yet, though.

"The girl he had selling for him said she was beating the streets, probably hitting 20 businesses a day, and half were taking ads," Weaver said. "I just had a call today from a business that said he took them for $600."