Back in prison, Russell Erxleben sees himself more victim than con man

There was a sense of promise the day Russell Erxleben walked out of the dark glass doors of a Beaumont federal prison in June 2005.

In his maroon Suburban, as he and his wife drove out of the sprawling complex of brick and metal, trimmed green grass and coiling barbed wire, she asked him to turn around and take one last look. After nearly five years of incarceration, the former University of Texas and NFL kicker was free.

"I told her no way, I am looking forward," he wrote in an email last month. "One thing I was thinking was I am never coming back here again."

Almost nine years later, he did, as inmate No. 04048-180.

The government calls Erxleben a classic con artist, a liar who bilked investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a series of foreign trading ventures that went nowhere. Federal judges refused to set bail for him, describing him as a savvy manipulator who could run deals even from behind bars, and his clients are seeking their money back in a state lawsuit that accuses him of fraud.

More at http://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/2014/06/07/back-in-prison-russell-erxleben-sees-himself-more-victim-than-con-man-a-515139.html .