HUDSON: Detective Kaija Jeantet imagines Michael Segal sitting on a beach somewhere sipping a tropical drink, living off the $2 million he is accused of scamming from at least 147 people all over Northeast Ohio.“Allegedly scammed,” Jeantet corrected. “We have to say ‘allegedly’ because Michael Segal never had his day in court. He would have, but he skipped out on his bond and has not been seen since.”The people who prosecutors say were ensnared in the schemes include lawyers, doctors and waitresses — friends, and friends of friends.The Hudson detective believes Segal, who disappeared in July, will be caught.“They always are,” she said. “He’ll slip up somewhere.”Segal, 64, moved to Hudson about 15 years ago, leaving the Boston area after losing his license to practice law in 1993. In 1995, he was also disbarred in Pennsylvania. In Ohio, he introduced himself as the president of any one of about a dozen fake companies, including Freedom Developers, Webster Developers and Caraioca Inc. Only the latter company was incorporated, Jeantet said.From 2009 through the first half of 2011, Jeantet said, Segal persuaded friends and associates to invest more than $400,000 in a Tiger Woods golf course that he said was to be built in North Carolina. Mesmerized by the thought of being part owner of a fancy course and maybe playing 18 holes with Woods himself, dozens of people plunked down $10,000 or more to get in on the ground floor of the golf gold mine.But there was no golf course. Never was.“I’m just so humiliated by this. I don’t want anyone to know I fell for it,” said a Stow woman. “I gave Segal a check for $10,000 in September 2009, all the money I had. But there was no golf course.”James Finley of Hudson is bitter for another reason. He contends that he and friends were cheated out of more than $7,000 by Segal in a half-price computer scam.“I can’t wait for them to catch him and bring him back,” Finley said. “I would spit right in his face.”Classic Ponzi scheme Police said Segal’s main investment tool was the Tiger Woods course.“If someone got suspicious and demanded their promised profits, he would give them some of the money given to him by new investors,” Jeantet said. “It was a classic Ponzi scheme.”Police said Segal used the Tiger Woods sex scandal as a reason the course was delayed.Police said that since Segal’s arrest and indictment, which listed 72 victims, they have learned of more victims, bringing the figure to 147 and the amount of suspected stolen money to more than $2 million.Police first caught wind of the operation last November, when a Hudson resident called after determining he invested $10,000 in a golf course that would never exist.“That led to more victims. Each told a similar story,” Jeantet said. “They were all told that their investment would show great yields within 90 days.”By February, police had found victims from all over the area but primarily from Summit and Cuyahoga counties. Some people trusted Segal with their life’s savings. Jeantet said that while the real estate scam victimized people wealthy enough to invest $10,000 or more, Segal enticed people of more modest means in another way.“He said he could sell Apple products like iPads, iPhones and computers at half the price,” said Jeantet. “For this scheme, he went after people he knew, like the waitresses at the local restaurants and coffee shops he frequented. He got money from mailmen, gardeners — working people who did not have money to waste.”Segal took the money and promised electronic equipment that never arrived, the detective said.“One elderly couple was so excited about it that they told their daughter, who was a schoolteacher out West,” Jeantet said. “She offered the computers to her students, so they gave him a lot of money. The couple was so ashamed at being deceived that they repaid the losses out of their own pocket.”Arrest comes in lease casePolice said a third scheme proved to be Segal’s undoing. Jeantet said that by using information gleaned from investors in the golf course probe, police learned Segal would lease expensive cars in other people’s names using fake identification. It’s believed he leased seven cars this way, keeping the vehicles until they were repossessed because he never made payments.On April 30, the State Highway Patrol was waiting for Segal after he picked up a leased car from a dealer in Brook Park. He was held in the Summit County Jail on theft charges until June 29, when a Summit County grand jury indicted him on 19 counts of theft-related charges over the golf course, Apple products and car-leasing scams. The charges include thefts from the elderly and the disabled.On July 6, Summit County Common Pleas Judge Mary Margaret Rowlands reduced Segal’s bail from $100,000 to $10,000 and released him on a signature bond. He was to wear an ankle monitor and remain in his residence. Segal was to return to court, surrender his passport and get his monitor attached on July 11. On that day, he was nowhere to be found.When contacted for this story, Rowlands declined to comment on the reason for the bail reduction.“None of the victims have ever complained to this court about the bail reduction,” she said.Segal’s former lawyer, Joseph Gorman, said, “It was a white-collar crime, there was no history of violence, and he had health concerns.”Gorman also said the judge was aware that under Ohio’s speedy-trial law, Segal’s trial would have had to begin in 90 days, but by releasing him, the prosecution and defense got more time to prepare a case.Jeantet said authorities have spoken to Segal’s wife, Carla, who remains in Hudson. She told the detective she has had no contact with her husband.Carla Segal could not be reached for comment on this story.Voices of the victims The Stow woman who is too ashamed to allow her name to be used said she is one of the few people who caught on to Segal’s golf course scam early and got her $10,000 investment returned.“A friend told me about the deal,” the woman said. “I trusted my friend, but didn’t know Segal. I gave Segal a check for $10,000. He told me I would get money back by November. November came and went, and I found I could no longer get him on the phone. I made a million phone calls to him, and he never returned any.“I finally got an attorney involved and went to the police,” she said. “That’s when he started paying me back. I still wonder who he ripped off to get me my money back. That has always bothered me.”Finley, the Hudson man who got involved in the computer mess, operates Jimmy’s Lawn Care, Landscape and Design. He said Segal persuaded him to rope in friends and customers.“I knew Segal for 13 years. He drank at a place where I used to tend bar,” Finley said. “I plowed his driveway in the winter. One day last October, he asked if I wanted an iPad at half-price. He said he did business with Apple and could get as many as I wanted.“Y’know, my mother always said if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” Finley said. “She was right. So I gave him $356 for an iPad, and he said I should offer the same deal to others. All in all, I convinced 30 friends and customers to buy iPads. The total came to about $7,000, but the iPads never came.”Finley said that when the scam was revealed, he lost a lot of friends.“Some of them understood and told me not to worry about it,” he said. “Others thought I was in on it. Still do, I suppose. I paid back as much as I could, almost went out of business doing so. I’ll be mowing my lawyer’s lawn for free for the rest of my life to pay him back.”Finley is stunned that a man he considered a friend could be so heartless.“He destroyed my business, a business that operates on trust,” he said. “One time, he offered me a sweet land deal in Vegas. I’m thankful I didn’t have the money to take him up on it.”Stories sound the sameDeena Barrett, of Cleveland Heights, told a similar story. Like others, she was told about the great deal on Apple products by a friend she trusted.“Segal had a way about him; he was very convincing,” she said. “I gave him $1,200 for two iPads and he kept asking me to bring in more people. I only brought in one, and I feel awful about that. I gave him the money and waited. I’m still waiting. The $1,200 was a lot of money for me. He was so good, he convinced me to buy a $100 warranty. Can you imagine?”Jonathan Madorsky of University Heights also gave Segal $1,200 in cash for two laptop computers he never received. Madorsky said he was introduced to Segal by a friend, and the two met several times.“Worst part is, I told a friend about the deal and he told friends and they told friends,” Madorsky said. “I don’t know how many people got cheated because of me.”Madorsky said he did get a measure of satisfaction.“I’m a process server,” he explained. “After he was arrested, I got to serve him a lawsuit for a lawyer friend of mine he cheated. I went into the jail and served him the papers. He stared at me but never recognized me. I gave him the papers and never told him who I was.“What would have been the point?”