leaving the business and millionaire partner bankrupt. and for all the world knew, this shady character s name was steve heitman, evelyn s son. you feel violated. it s an invasion of privacy. and for you a sacred memory? yeah. yet evelyn heitman couldn t figure it out? why her son, why her sacred memory? and who was the man staring at her from the front page of the newspaper? a thousand miles away, a man who had also lost a son was staring at the same newspaper brought to him by a relative. and she said this sounds like the guy that scammed you out of your guns and businesses and everything. she handed me the paper. it was jim rowe. so finally, the mystery man was identified. not mike or steve or bob. but jim. jim rowe. james ruben rowe, to be exact.
steve heitman was just 20 when he drowned, and 25 years later, in wenatchee, washington, his mom still grieves. can anybody who hasn t lost a child understand what it s like? i don t think so. it s a feeling you never ever get over. she was facing another melancholy fourth of july, the anniversary of steve s death, when she came home to find a reporter had left a message on her machine. he says i suspect somebody is using your dead son s identity, so i listened to that message at least three or four times. do you remember how you felt? oh, i mean, just feel like your whole world is been shattered. i mean, how could somebody do that? but there was the story in the seattle paper called the eastside journal. a mystery man set up big businesses with other people s money, lived the high life and skipped town with as much as $1.2 million.
dale from microsoft declined to be interviewed for this story but people that know him describe a good-hearted man with a lot of money to invest. he started off buying a pair of skis from steve heitman. and before you know it, was bankrolling a brand new business, a ski shop called nordic sports haus. i saw a million dollar plus check written to open one of the stores. this man was an early employ of nordic sports haus, the store steve started with dale s money. steve was the one running the stores. dale was basically the money man. i m throwing as much money at this business to make it work. according to employees, steve was happy to help dale throw his money away. while my truck was in the shop, steve handed me the keys to a $80,000 porsche said drive this for a couple of days. i mean, the perks were unbelievable. the perks and promise of opportunity drew a former colleague as well, that quit his job and came to work at steve heitman s place, even though he had seen heitm
any better, but if steve were alive, steve would laugh his butt off at this. he would sit there and howl. he says he needed an air-tight new identity to work his magic on the microsoft guys. but for most of his cons, he just made up any name he pleased. i rarely used any i.d. i mean, once you ve been to a bank three times, they no longer ask you for i.d. make sure you hit the same teller every time. smile and wave at the vice president even if he doesn t know you. he ll wave back and then the teller says if he knows so and so, he is okay. are you thinking this consciously when you do it? this is the plan, i have to wave at the vice president? yeah. little wheels going all the time. not one little wheel in there. big, major heavy duty high-powered wheels in there. wheels that he admits just crushed his victims. from sharp, young millionaires to trusting women, to vulnerable senior citizens. there are two rules that i went by when i was on the outside.
nights. the bar s owner remembers him very well. he told me he was the brother of steve growing an from the new england patriots and he said he also played with the patriots himself and played in the super bowl. he had the super bowl ring to prove it and certainly looked the part. about six feet tall and over 200 pounds. but mike growing an said it is what he did after the nfl that was really interest. he said he went to work for a small company for a small salary, stock options. he said after a couple of years he accumulated over 1.5 million shares of stock in this company and he said that company was microsoft. yes. that microsoft. which meant mike growing an was rolling in money which sounded great to the baroner. he said he wanted to remod tell restaurant and make it a model for a chain of restaurants he was about to open. growing an got to work getting the restaurant ready to open as grogan s irish