Thirty-year sentence meted out in $1.2 million swindle of Nevada woman

NEVADA, Mo. — A judge sentenced a Nevada man this week to 30 years in prison for his role in a $1.2 million swindle of an elderly woman.

Circuit Judge David Munton assessed Christopher I. Buller the prison term at a sentencing hearing Tuesday in Vernon County Circuit Court. A jury had found the 40-year-old defendant guilty of a Class A felony count of financial exploitation of an elderly person in a trial the first week of April.

Buller's co-defendant in the case, Eric S. Davis, 41, of Joplin, pleaded guilty a year ago to a reduced Class B felony count of financial exploitation of an elderly person and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The two men deceived a Nevada woman into selling all her stock in a major oil company to help bail Davis out of a supposed financial obligation to a trucking company and legal trouble with a court in Kansas City.

Davis befriended the woman in January 2011 and she paid for him to attend a truck driver training school, where he rolled a truck into a ditch after just three days in the program. Although he was never a truck driver or an employee of the company that ran the school, Davis told the woman that he was employed by it and needed money to pay for the truck he wrecked.

Buller assisted Davis by calling her and posing as a company employee with information about the amount of payments due.

Davis subsequently extended his deceit of the woman by telling her that he needed to pay large sums of money to a judge in Kansas City to avoid serving jail time for a past debt. Davis provided her with the fictitious name of "Judge Henry Copeland," and Buller assisted him in that part of the swindle by telephoning her and posing as the judge.

According to a probable-cause affidavit filed in the case, Davis would meet the victim outside her bank or in store parking lots, and she would bring him boxes or bags full of cash.

The swindle came to light at a guardianship hearing in July 2014 when she testified that she had sold all her stock in the oil company and gave the money to Davis so he could take it to the judge in Kansas City. An examination of her living trust account by an investigator with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services determined that between January 2011 and February 2012, she'd made 16 cash withdrawals totaling $1.2 million.

Davis told the investigator that he was a regular patron of a casino in Oklahoma and that he "may have gambled away" all the money he received from the woman.


Christopher Buller chose not to testify at his trial in April when a jury found him guilty of assisting Eric Davis in the bilking of an elderly woman.

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Thirty-year sentence meted out in $1.2 million swindle of Nevada woman