double life of Lauren Baumann, The

D Magazine, Nov 01, 1998

When Ed Baumann thinks of his estranged wife, Lauren, two images come to mind. One is of Lauren ensconced in her luxurious office, dressed in a power suit with a short skirt, wheeling and dealing on the phone--to customers, real estate agents, banker. Sharp with numbers, Lauren Baumann worked long hours, d mined to make her mortgage business grow. "She was real smart, real creative with the mortgage business," Ed says. "She'd get loans through that I couldn't understand how she got these people to qualify. But as far as doing anything illegal? No."

The other Lauren is the overripe vixen poured into a black lace gown with alarmingly low cleavage, posing in boudoir shots to show off her new breast implants, vamping in tight leather in a vanity video.

Now, as 47-year-old Ed Baumann surveys the ruins of his life in Plano's fast lane, the bewildered former millionaire ruefully wonders how far back he should have known that 30-year-old Lauren was a thief. Long before the mysterious business dealings and lavish overspending, the flashy parties and the new breasts, there'd been the $2,000 bad check she made out to him after they got engaged, the forged credit cards, the hidden account statements, the suspicions about a secret lover.

Instead, blinded by love or bad judgment or both, Ed hung on until he had no choice but to help federal authorities set a trap for his wife, closing down her multi-million-dollar Ponzi scheme and possibly setting up Mrs. Baumann for a trip to prison.

As he sits alone in his cavernous Plano Xanadu, which he soon will be forced to put on the market, and ponders how to rebuild his own ravaged reputation, Ed Baumann is a confused and bitter man.

"I tried everything I could," he says. "She wiped me out."

"Oh, honey, I have to have it," Lauren squealed. The 1990 Mercedes 300 CE, perched like a bonbon on a plate in front of a Southern California car dealership, was a unique shade of teal. Lauren spotted it as they were driving by in February 1992 and, in that instant, had to possess it. The Baumanns had been married a little less than a year, and Lauren was five months pregnant. The price was $40,000. Ed paid cash.

After all, he could afford it. After working for years as the territory sales manager of a medical supplies company, in October 1991 Ed had hit the jackpot: The company went public, and his stock options were worth about $1 million. His life was on the right track; not only was Ed a millionaire, he had a pretty wife 17 years his junior and a baby on the way.

But Ed didn't really like California or the mortgage business. He wanted a place to raise a family, a place where he could start his own company. In late 1992, after their first son was born, the Baumanns, attracted by Texas' entrepreneurial culture, moved to Las Colinas.

In April 1993, they found a lot on Twin Lakes Way in Lakeside (off Parker Road near Preston). At $210,000, the land cost more than Ed wanted to spend, but it was almost an acre, next to a creek and a pond. They signed a contract with a homebuilder; for a down payment, Ed took $157,000 from his stock margin account at Schwab.

The house ended up being 6,200 square feet, with a three-car-garage and a guest house. Lauren found a decorator, and they began to make changes and additions. To make payments easier while he traveled on business, Ed added his wife as a signatory on his account at Schwab. When he finally added up the bills, the house had cost $766,000.

Though he thought Lauren had gone overboard on the decorating and additions, Ed didn't complain too much. "I felt we'd get our money out of it." he says. The four-columned edifice was something more than a house; it became the symbol of his hard-earned success.

For Ed, it may have been a culmination. But Lauren was just getting started.

She decided to put her mortgage experience to work. incorporating Accelerated Funding Mortgage Corp. Her idea was to act as a retailer to the booming Plano market, handling the paperwork and then sending her customers' loan packages to wholesale lenders such as Sunbelt Savings for actual funding. In a few years, Accelerated was processing about $3 million in loans per month. Lauren toiled long hours. When the time came to give birth to her second son, she had the baby on a Thursday and was back at work on Monday.

In a flourishing market the money flowed, and Lauren quickly got used to it. Her weekly florist bill was $2,000. Dropping $6,000 to $8,000 at Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, or Bachendorf's on a Saturday wasn't unusual for her.

The Baumanns had become good friends with their Plano neighbors: Gary Hartstein, who had made his money in adult video stores; Paul and Wendy Morse, daughter of Wendy's Hamburgers founder Dave Thomas; and, especially, Pam and Brian Greninger, who owned Service Rubber Group. Lauren loved to buy her friends expensive gifts and to throw lavish parties. For a bridal shower for her masseuse, she bought a couple of cases of Dom Perignon and hired a former La Bare dancer to chauffeur the guests in a limo. For her oldest son's fifth birthday, Lauren threw a Jurassic Park-themed bash, complete with a thatched roof over the pool and live parrots, monkeys, snakes, and cheetahs. Lauren always played down the costs to Ed, though anyone who attended could see that the food and decorations were always over the top. It was only later that Ed found out his son's birthday party cost about $50,000.