Pro and Con

That craziness was going to stop, Harlan promised. He had a new idea: an open house on December 5 to let the neighborhood know about Harlan21. Then the money would roll in, paychecks would clear and debts would be paid. No one needed to worry; Harlan was going to make things right.

They had his word on it.

As Keith remembers it, there was nothing remarkable about his February 2002 visit to Len Lyall Chevrolet at 14500 East Colfax Avenue in Aurora. He was looking for a car, took one for a test drive but didn't buy it. "They couldn't make the deal I wanted, so I left," he says now. He might not have recalled the salesman he talked to at all, if not for the man's unusual name: Amadeus Harlan.

That name came up again seven months later when a police officer called Keith from Bakersfield, California, and said they'd found his stolen car, a 2000 Cadillac Escalade. Keith didn't own an Escalade, nor had he reported a car stolen.

Keith, who asked that his last name not be used, requested a credit report and was surprised to discover that he was not just the owner of the Escalade, purchased in Centennial, but he'd also evidently obtained several thousand dollars in cash loans and was the co-owner of both a $36,000 Mercedes C320, bought from a dealership in Englewood, and a $31,000 Ford Mustang obtained from Sil-TerHar Motors in Broomfield. The co-owner was Amadeus Harlan.

Keith remembered that at Len Lyall, Harlan had photocopied Keith's Colorado driver's license — an older variety that listed his Social Security number. Harlan must have used it, he realized, to create false identification. When he met Harlan at the dealership, Keith had no way of knowing that he'd been paroled from prison for his 1995 car-theft crimes just two months earlier.

"I only met the guy once, and he tore my credit up," says Keith, who filed a police report. "I don't know why they keep giving him chances."

According to police records, Harlan's Len Lyall job application noted that he was previously employed at John Elway AutoNation Ford. AutoNation did not return phone calls, and Dan Johnson, Len Lyall's general manager, says he can't say if Harlan ever worked for his dealership: "We went to a whole new computer system in 2005, so I would have to check off-site records, and I am not willing to do that."

A salesman at Sil-TerHar Motors, however, vividly remembers Harlan buying a $31,000 Mustang there just a month later. Since Harlan had poor credit, he told the salesman that his brother was going to co-sign for the Mustang. His brother wasn't with him at the dealership, but Harlan gave the salesman his brother's information — all of which was actually Keith's. "It was totally out of the norm for us to do so, but he convinced us his brother was not going to be able to come into the dealership," says the salesman, who asked to remain anonymous. Harlan took the salesman to a post office, introduced a man working there as his brother and had him co-sign for the Mustang. "He definitely worked the system," says the salesman. "I guarantee we have since changed the way we deal with people."

Harlan didn't mention being a pro football player at Sil-TerHar, but that didn't mean he'd put his old con to rest. One night in early 2003, Harlan walked into Stevinson Lexus at 801 Indiana Street in Lakewood and said he played for the Broncos. "He had the look of an athlete," admits general manager Steve Szekula, but he wasn't convinced — especially when he looked up his name later on the Internet and found no mention of Harlan as a Broncos player. Szekula called a Lakewood police detective, and they set up a sting. The next day, he called Harlan back and said he had a deal he couldn't refuse. "As soon as he came in and signed the credit application that he was a Denver Broncos football player, he committed forgery and perjury, and the cops came in and arrested him," says Szekula.

Harlan's parole was revoked, but the penal system wouldn't hold him for long. He was paroled again in June 2003, used a bad check to obtain a motorcycle from Thunder Mountain Harley-Davidson in Loveland and absconded again. When he was arrested in 2004, he faced more serious charges. According to a U.S. District Court indictment, in late 2002 Harlan had broken into the post office in Nucla and stolen money orders.

He was paroled in March 2005, but he was soon up to his old ways. That month, he used bad checks to take an $18,000 Lincoln LS from RD Motors in Lakewood. Later that summer, he showed up in Lubbock, Texas, using more bad checks to pay for a hotel room. In August, back in Denver, he provided police with several false names when he was arrested and charged with domestic violence after a fight with his wife.

"He's sort of an argument for a 'three strikes and you're out' law," says Greg Goodwin, owner of the Kuni Lexus dealership. "It seems like the system is sort of helping him do this."