And that kicked her into high gear. Within a day or two, she'd found the Johnson case online and talked to Paul Clote. Shah was no longer welcome at her dad's bedside.
The postscript came two weeks later when Jackson's phone rang. It was Moss out at the cemetery, inquiring about their payment. Jackson was bewildered. Moss told him that his attorney had been out there recently and set up his burial, but then never returned to pay them. "What are you talking about?" he asked. "I'm alive and well and not about to croak anytime soon." Jackson called his daughter and asked if she was sitting down. "You're not gonna believe this," he told Estopinal. "Shah was out at Memorial Oaks posing as my attorney, and he told them that my death was imminent and he was making my funeral arrangements."
Courtesy of Houston Police Department
According to police, Dinesh Shah, pictured here at the scene of his 2009 arrest on Jack Street in Montrose, attempted to pass himself off as the attorney of an octogenarian retired FBI agent. Shah allegedly even went so far as to attempt to arrange the man's funeral.
This 1976 Ford Elite once belonged to "Dave Martin," a man Dinesh Shah befriended in 2007. After Shah praised Martin's car in a supermarket parking lot, the two men started hanging out. Shah promised Martin he could make him money trading commodities. Instead, Martin says, Shah eventually made off with more than $9,000, a vintage hat and watch, and, finally, his beloved Elite.
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That was when they took matters to the police. Almost immediately after Shah was out of his life, Kenneth Jackson's health started to improve.
Anderson just shakes his head at Shah's stupidity over the cemetery ploy. "[Jackson] was a nice old guy and I enjoyed trading stories with him, but he didn't have long for this world," Anderson says. "If Shah could have waited, just stayed there and got in his good graces and not push it along at all, I would bet you that Ken Jackson would have given him some money, because he was sittin' on quite a bit even though he was living in that old raggedy house. He didn't spend anything. He kept it all."
After talking to Moss and Siegler, Anderson had enough to charge Shah with twice impersonating a lawyer, a third-degree felony. He was formally charged on October 19. In the days that followed, Anderson searched Shah's duplex on Jack Street in Montrose and found reams and reams of documents, bank statements, photographs and other mementos belonging to his victims or possible future victims.
After bonding out, Shah fled to the home of Jonathan Davidsson, a handsome young Swedish ballet dancer. (Police have said the two were lovers; Davidsson vigorously denies this is true.) According to Jim Perdue Jr., a lawyer who opposed Shah in the Johnson civil case and who observed Shah's subsequent probation revocation hearing, Shah spun Davidsson a wild tale. Davidsson would testify that he was in New York when Shah called him and said that his CIA cover had been blown and that his Jack Street home had been raided by Chinese agents. "Whatever you do, do not go back to the house on Jack Street," Shah told Davidsson. "It's not safe. It's under surveillance around the clock." Shah asked for permission to move in with Davidsson, and the dancer granted it.
"Now you wonder how any intelligent 22 year old can believe that, how in the world can you have bought that even for a second, but that's the kind of insane power that the guy has," Perdue marvels. "He maintained power over that kid for another six months by telling him that the Chinese had exposed his CIA cover and raided his house. And the next thing you know he's living at Richmond and Montrose with this kid. And he's doing all this with a $20 million judgment that I've won against him hanging over his head."
And that's not all. Davidsson had just been let go from the ballet and given a tidy severance package to tide him over. According to the sworn testimony Perdue heard at Shah's revocation hearing, Davidsson handed all of the $20,000 severance check over to Shah to "invest." "That was every dime that kid had," Perdue says. "And then it was, 'Oh, and by the way, give me the key to your apartment. I'm moving in with you.'"
Shah's existence with Davidsson was hardly peaceful. In a probable cause affidavit filed in June of last year, police say that Shah started shoving and head-butting Davidsson in May of 2010 and continued doing so into June, right up until the day Davidsson fled his own apartment to get away. (Davidsson declined to be interviewed for this story but insisted he was never Shah's lover.)
All of this would be heard in Judge Barr's court at Shah's probation revocation hearings in the fall of last year. Much as his brother had done, Shah developed a sudden injury just before his day in court. After many delays, he finally was pushed into court in a wheelchair and made it known that his old hernia was acting up. Chuckles Anderson: "I had real bad laryngitis when I was on the stand there, but when I saw him in that wheelchair, I almost said it out loud: 'Ain't this a bunch of...'"
A source in the courthouse claims that surveillance videos were made of Shah throwing the wheelchair in the trunk of the car and walking around freely. Shah also claimed on the stand that his father Anil Kumar Shah was dead. Sources say that the elder Shah would pick his son up from the courthouse.
Early in the proceedings, Barr cut off a potential stampede of witnesses early and said she'd already heard enough to revoke his probation. He would serve out the rest of his sentence in the Texas Department of Corrections.
