As surprised as Skip Oliver was to see that Culwell was doing so well these days, Houston attorney Sylvester Anderson was, if anything, even more astonished. Until the Press brought it to his attention in July, Anderson had no idea that Culwell was enjoying such flush times.
Back in 2004, Anderson successfully sued Culwell and diamond seller Uri Cohen after it came to light that Culwell attempted to repay a $190,000 debt to Cohen by giving him the deed to a Heights property owned by an ailing, elderly woman by the name of Delores Ponzine Hawkins, known as "Dee" to her close friends. Anderson thought that by this time Culwell would be down and out. After all, Culwell was serving federal prison time throughout the whole trial, including the October 2006 day when the judgment came down in favor of Anderson and his client. What's more, state authorities had also convicted Culwell for the same case Anderson litigated in civil court.
A recent
Inc.com article identifies Brian Culwell as the CEO of fast-growing Gold and Silver Buyers, Inc. Culwell has claimed to the
Houston Press that he is neither an officer nor a director of Gold and Silver Buyers.
Barry Sigman
Brian Culwell has been a burr under Houston Better Business Bureau chief Dan Parson's saddle for years. Ten years ago, Parsons had bulging files full of complaints about Culwell's travel and jewelry sales businesses. More recently, Parsons says Gold and Silver Buyers attempted to claim BBB membership without bothering to join.
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Anderson's case and the sworn statements and depositions that went with it show that Culwell could be a cold-blooded cheat as easily in person as he could over the Internet or through direct mail.
In the late 1990s, Culwell met Hawkins's grandson Courteland Congo shortly after Congo got out of prison, or perhaps while both were behind bars (sources vary). Congo introduced Culwell to Hawkins as his mentor, a guy who would help him figure out life while the two shot hoops and hung out.
Hawkins had been a bookkeeper for Exxon when she transferred from Baltimore to Houston in the mid-1970s. After retirement, she picked up odd jobs as a caretaker for incapacitated people.
Hawkins also had a couple of properties and opened up a halfway house in a ramshackle cabin she owned in the Heights. From the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, Hawkins housed ex-convicts and mentally ill people in the house, which she called Halfway Home with Dee. The since-gentrified neighborhood was then predominantly poor and black.
By the early 2000s, even the shack had fallen into disrepair, and Hawkins was no longer running Halfway Home with Dee. A friend named Flora would stay in the house rent-free, occasionally overnight, as a sort of caretaker.
Meanwhile, Hawkins had fallen on hard times. She would later say that because of a $400 debt to a credit card company, she couldn't get credit anywhere and she believed, oddly, that without better credit she wouldn't be able to sell the Heights property.
One autumn day in 2002, she went out for pizza with Culwell and Congo. Hawkins told Culwell about her credit problem, and Culwell told her he would get back with her. A few days later, he returned, telling her the only way he could help her would be if she gave him power of attorney over her affairs. It wouldn't cost her a dime, Culwell told her.
At the time, Hawkins had recently suffered two strokes and was heavily medicated. She didn't have any idea how granting Culwell her power of attorney would help repair her credit, but he told her it would, and she believed him. He'd always been so good to Congo, after all. On November 8, 2002, she signed it over. Culwell helpfully told her what to initial, so she went ahead and okayed his right to make real estate transactions on her behalf. "He just told me to sign here and here," she said. Again, all she thought it enabled him to do was "fix her credit."
"Do you know what a power of attorney does?" an attorney would later ask Hawkins.
"Yes," Hawkins would reply.
"What does it do?"
"It gives him the power to do what he said he was going to do. Like I said, ma'am, he said sign here, here, here and here; and that's all I did. I didn't read this."
"Is it your testimony that you signed this power of attorney without reading it?"
"I didn't," Hawkins replied. "I trusted him so I did."
A few weeks later, Hawkins met up with Culwell at a Denny's and asked him for a progress report. Where was he, she wanted to know, with fixing her credit? Culwell assured her that he was working on it. That was the last she saw of Brian Culwell until after she got a notice of eviction from the Harris County tax department.
Meanwhile, Culwell was in trouble of his own. He owed diamond broker Uri Cohen a shade under $200,000 for jewels he hadn't paid for, and the Israeli was getting restless, dunning Culwell daily, sometimes many times a day over the phone. Occasionally, Culwell would send Cohen a bad check — eventually $17,000 worth of them, according to court documents. Finally Culwell proposed a solution. As partial payment of his debt to Cohen, the Israeli could take his pick from a portfolio of three properties Culwell owned, at least ostensibly.
One of these was Hawkins's Heights property, and that was the one Cohen selected, on November 14, six days after Culwell had obtained the power of attorney from Hawkins. Cohen agreed that the conveyance of this property to him would negate $55,000 of Culwell's debt to him. Culwell and Cohen met in the office of Cohen's real estate attorney Lana Dieringer and Culwell deeded Cohen the property. (It seemed like a good deal to Cohen: The property was appraised at $47,700 in 2003; $83,400 the following year; and today, the neighborhood is sprouting condos and bike trails. Today, with a swanky 2,700-square-foot townhouse on the lot, the Harris County Appraisal District assesses the property's market value at $425,000.)
