Wolfram on way back to hometown

Wolfram: `I miss the four seasons'

After nearly 20 years away, Ted Wolfram is coming home to his native northwestern Ohio. Wolfram, who served 10 years in federal prison for the $47 million Bell & Beckwith brokerage fraud, said he is selling his home in Las Vegas, where he has lived for a decade, and plans to move to the Toledo area within four months.

“I'm a Midwestern person. I miss the four seasons, the rain and thunderstorms,” said Wolfram, who added that he settled in Las Vegas after prison mainly because his former wife, Zula, wanted to live there. Mrs. Wolfram divorced him in 1985, while she was working for a casino in Las Vegas, but the couple reunited after his release in 1993. She died two years ago.

Wolfram, now 72, has a son in Ohio, a son in Indiana, and two daughters in Las Vegas. He also has two brothers and other relatives in northwest Ohio. Since Bell & Beckwith's failure, he has visited Toledo only a few times - for family funerals and to give a talk about white-collar crime prevention at the Maumee Valley chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization.

“I don't have any idea what my reception will be,” he said. “I don't intend to be prominent. I won't bother anybody. I was never a coward and I'm not now.”

Wolfram, who grew up in Maumee, said friends from the area encouraged him to move back.

“But if there's a lot of animosity, if they don't want me back, then I won't come,” he said.