Philly News
May 5, 2005
WHILE Tom Hastings lavished his teenage daughter with new cars and a credit card with no spending limit, he also told her how to cheat her way out of paying to fix a car she wrecked in a crash, she said.
To Hastings, 61, who grew up poor and without a father, life revolved around money - however he could get it, relatives said.
At 21, he scammed 12-year-old paper boys out of small amounts of cash from their routes, an ex-wife said.
He swindled college fraternities out of hundreds of dollars from rock concerts, relatives said.
And then he found the real cash cow: sports events and travel packages.
The latest alleged scam involved the Feb. 6 Super Bowl, after which more than 50 fans, mostly local Eagles fans, accused Hastings of selling them tickets that he failed to deliver on game day.
That alleged scheme has finally caught up with him.
Hastings is now in jail on federal charges of violating terms of his parole.
Hastings, who uses numerous aliases, was arrested Tuesday afternoon by U.S. marshals at his condo in Tampa, Fla., said Lisa Alfonso, one of the marshals who made the arrest.
The 5-foot-4, 145-pound Hastings was denied bond at a hearing and is in a Hillsborough County jail awaiting another hearing, Alfonso said. He faces up to two years in prison if found guilty.
Christine Hastings said she is glad her father is behind bars.
"I'm glad that he is not able to hurt people," said the 40-year-old businesswoman and mother from Richmond, Va.
"This is not the first time he's done this," she said. "This has been going on for 40 years."
"Tom Hastings will call you today and say that there's an eclipse out there right now," she said. "He's going to convince you that there is one and then he's going to sell you tickets to see it."
Hastings served a 15-month sentence for stealing $370,000 from a youth group that planned a trip to see Pope John Paul II. Hastings was prohibited from selling travel packages for three years as a condition of his release from federal prison in March 2004.
Nevertheless, in January, Hastings created another business, USA Sports Tours, took the alias Tom Allen and aggressively promoted Super Bowl packages worth up to $4,800 on local sports-talk-radio station WIP (610-AM).
He sold about 250 packages at a price of more than $1 million, according to a lawsuit filed by his business partners, Bart and Jennifer Whitaker.
More than 50 Eagles fans were left empty-handed hours before the game in Jacksonville, Fla. Many of them had shelled out thousands of dollars to buy tickets at the last minute. But some ended up watching the game in Jacksonville bars.
Vince Boianelli Jr., of Cherry Hill, and his father paid for two tickets, but received only one on game day. The younger Boianelli later was able to recoup more than $2,000 from his credit-card company, but still lost almost $700, he said. He said he's glad about the arrest.
"I think he should serve time a lot longer than his first sentence because obviously he didn't learn his lesson," Boianelli said of Hastings. "I hope... it dissuades anyone from ever trying to pull a scam on other people."
The U.S. attorney's office in Tampa accuses Hastings of violating the terms of his supervised release by opening a bank account and engaging in travel business.
The Pennsylvania attorney general's office is investigating the Super Bowl packages and is coordinating with two Florida state agencies.
Christine Hastings said she feels sorry for the damage her father has caused.
"My compassion goes out to the people he has hurt, only because he has hurt me so long, and I've begged him for so long to change his ways," she said yesterday.
Hastings grew up in Virginia with his mother and brother. His father left the family when Tom was a little boy, relatives said.
Hastings married Christine's mother, and they divorced when Christine was 4. He went on to marry three other women and later adopted a baby girl, who is now grown. His current wife, Michelle, is in her 30s.
Hastings is listed on the dating Web site Match.com under the name "Livetotravel396."
He describes himself as a 51-year-old divorced business owner looking for a 29-to-40-year-old woman "who is appreciative of the good life and not the greedy type," his Web posting said.
Christine Hastings said her father asked her to sign a contract when she was in college so he could start a business, using her Social Security number, for the Olympics in Atlanta. She refused.
She said she stays in touch with her father by e-mail at least once a week, and has tried in vain to develop a closer relationship with him.
She hopes one day her father will change his ways.
"I know he lives in fear of going to hell," she said. "I pray for him daily that he will ask God for forgiveness and turn his life around."