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Theft Plea Gets Convicted Con Artist Longer Sentence

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 4, 2008

CLEARWATER - Jordan Gann, a con artist serving a sentence for stealing from a woman in Hillsborough County while posing as a doctor, was given a longer sentence Tuesday for doing the same thing to a woman in Pinellas County.

Circuit Judge Joseph Bulone sentenced the 27-year-old Massachusetts man to the maximum five years in prison after Gann pleaded no contest to a charge of grand theft. Those five years will run at the same time as the 30-month sentence Gann was given in the Hillsborough case in March, Bulone said.

In the Hillsborough case, Gann pretended to be a wealthy gynecologist while striking up an acquaintance with a woman he met on a Clearwater beach. They spent the night together, and Gann later took $750 from her after promising to help pay for her medical education if she first opened a bank account.

In the Pinellas case, he passed himself off as an oncologist with degrees from Johns Hopkins and Harvard universities and claimed he had invented a system to insert microbes in the brain to battle cancer cells, detectives said.

He let it be known he was interested in investing in real estate in downtown St. Petersburg and carried around a bank statement showing he had $154 million, detectives have said. Gann, who was using the name Rosenthal, was directed to a real estate agent and later told her that his mother had been in an accident in a Jaguar he had given her and he needed someone to talk to, detectives said.

They ended up at her home, and she ended up lending him $1,500, prosecutors and police say. Later, she found medication and other belongings missing, with her total loss amounting to $2,440, prosecutors said.

That woman, who was at Tuesday's plea and sentence hearing, declined to comment outside the courtroom.

Gann was respectful and nonchalant as he told Bulone he understood the terms of his plea. He declined to say what Ivy League college he dropped out of because, he said, it would be embarrassing to his family.

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.

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