Art of the Con

He made a beeline back to his criminal stamping ground. Within months, signs of another identity morph began to appear.

"Richard Grossman," he would later tell The Inquirer, "is a boring American name."

In August 2002, he registered two fictitious business names with the state. "Ariel Sonnet," the records say, would be a "name used in signing, promoting and selling art work"; "Ariel Sonnet Promoting" would be for "promotions and fund raising."

The Inquirer found no evidence that Grossman did business as "Ariel Sonnet." Even so, he was required to tell his probation officer that he had created an alias, according to Daniel W. Blahusch, chief federal probation officer for the eastern district of Pennsylvania.

Grossman did not.

However, the court certainly was informed - by Easttown Township police - when in May 2004 Grossman got into a road-rage hit-and-run in Chester County.

While driving with a girlfriend in her aging Volvo, he cut off a brand-new R-type Jaguar on Route 252. The other driver laid on his horn at a stop light. Grossman threw the car into reverse, struck the Jag, and took off.

When police traced the Volvo, its 39-year-old owner, Charlene Welde, tried to take the fall for her companion by claiming she had been at the wheel. But Grossman fessed up under pressure from his probation officer. Charged with disorderly conduct, leaving the scene of an accident, and reckless driving, he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct only and was fined. The other charges were dropped.

Although the arrest "was immediately reported to Judge Ludwig," Grossman was not remanded to prison, Blahusch wrote in an e-mail to The Inquirer. His supervision file is not a public record, Blahusch added, so it couldn't be discussed in further detail.

The Rev. Matthew Welde is hardly as tight-lipped. His daughter Charlene, an aspiring artist with her own mental-health issues, moved with Grossman into a backwoods rental home in Birchrunville, Chester County, in March 2004.

Though not yet calling himself Luc Sonnet, he "convinced her that he was a famous artist," said Welde, a Presbyterian evangelist. Grossman showed the minister his abstract prints and "told me that some of his pieces had been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York."

It wasn't long, though, before "she got on to him, and then he was extraordinarily hostile," Welde said, recalling a middle-of-the-night phone call from his daughter.

"[She] told me that Grossman was beating her, and was going to kill her," said Welde, who urged her in vain to call 911.

The next day, she told her father she had lied. Unconvinced, he confronted Grossman and threatened to summon police.

"He said, 'Oh, don't do that!' " the minister recounted. " 'I'm on probation. . . . I'll go back to jail.' "

Instead, it was Charlene who left. In June 2004, telling not even her family, she emptied her bank account and flew to France, her father said. From there, she settled in Israel, where she is today.

"She didn't know how to get out from under his control if she didn't do it precipitately," Welde said.

Since then, he said, Charlene has affirmed to him her claims of abuse, adding that Grossman had locked her in and out of the house, threatened her with a knife, and drained $13,000 from her savings.

"I know from my daughter that it was a living hell," Welde said. " . . . Fortunately, God has spared her."