Charles H. Pruenca, 38, appears in District Court, Warwick, yesterday on added felony charges for alleged scams.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

WARWICK –– Charles H. Pruenca was apparently believable enough in his various roles as Red Sox talent scout, real estate investor and cancer survivor to scam, or at least try to scam, about $1 million from people and his credit union, authorities say.

But Pruenca was not a Red Sox scout, had nothing to do with real estate, and never had cancer –– although state police Lt. Col. Steven O’Donnell said that Pruenca made weekly trips to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, for “treatments” that fooled his own fiancée, who waited in the lobby for him.

The real Pruenca, O’Donnell said, is a 38-year-old unemployed man, renting a house on the west side of Jamestown, scamming to feed a taste for luxury cars and other things.

Yesterday, as Pruenca sat in District Court facing four new felony charges, he was just a quiet, balding man in a Dallas Cowboys jacket. As he was led away in handcuffs to the Adult Correctional Institutions, where he is being held without bail for violating probation, Pruenca stared pleadingly at an older man sitting alone at the back of the courtroom.

It was his father, also named Charles Pruenca, wearing a look of shock.

An alleged stack of lies that had fooled Pruenca’s loved ones for years tumbled down in a month, uncovered in an investigation by Detective Diane Dougherty and investigator Gerard Ratigan, both members of the state police Financial Crimes Unit.

First, Pruenca was arrested on Nov. 5 for allegedly bilking a woman out of $6,300 for Red Sox tickets. Pruenca had told the woman he was a Red Sox talent scout with connections, the state police said. When the tickets never appeared, O’Donnell said, Pruenca told her he had cancer.

After that story appeared in The Journal on Nov. 8, a dozen people called the state police with their own stories about Pruenca.

Robert Vincent told the state police he had just loaned Pruenca $33,000 toward a fund that Pruenca said he was managing for a friend in Chicago who needed liver surgery, O’Donnell said.

Vincent had already given Pruenca $6,000 for Red Sox playoff tickets that never materialized — and then went on to pay up to $140,400 for four tickets for the Red Sox 2009 season, with seats in the exclusive EMC club, 10 away games and two private parking vouchers, O’Donnell said.

Pruenca also promised to get him two authentic Fenway Park seats for $675. Neither the seats, nor the tickets, materialized, O’Donnell said.

Still, Vincent told the state police, he wrote out the $33,000 check because Pruenca promised to pay him back “very soon,” O’Donnell said. The next day, he said, he saw the newspaper account of Pruenca’s arrest.

Four days later, Pruenca’s fiancée dumped him in the Greenwood Credit Union parking lot in Warwick after she found out one of his alleged victims was her former boss at American Power Conversion, John W. Collins Jr., according to an affidavit filed in court.

Collins, one of the first to come forward after Pruenca’s arrest, told the state police that he had written checks to Pruenca totaling $435,268 from 2005 through 2007 to buy into a condominium development in Warwick and tax sale properties in Jamestown and Warwick. Pruenca cashed the checks, but the investments never happened, O’Donnell said.

His fiancée, Lynn Lander, demanded that he repay Collins, and Pruenca tried –– by writing out a $315,000 check from a closed account at Bank Rhode Island and attempting to deposit it in his account at the Greenwood Credit Union in Warwick, according to the state police.

A Greenwood branch manager became suspicious when Pruenca kept asking her when he could get the money, O’Donnell said. Pruenca allegedly said the money was for his father’s medical bills, but she recognized him from the media reports. A call to Bank Rhode Island confirmed Pruenca’s account had been closed since 2004. She called the state police.

Lander stormed out into the parking lot with Pruenca and told him to call Collins and admit what he’d done. Then, she took his phone and left him at the bank.

Pruenca had told her he was a Sox talent scout, but Lander told the state police she never saw any paychecks from the Red Sox. When they attended games, she said, he always made excuses for why she couldn’t see his office, according to the affidavit.

She dialed the numbers in Pruenca’s cell phone that were Red Sox-related. The number for Red Sox owner John Henry rang at the Boston office of the U.S. passport service, the affidavit said.

The other purported Red Sox employee numbers either didn’t go through or were out of service, the affidavit said.

In District Court yesterday, Judge Mary Elizabeth McCaffrey set bail at $50,000 with surety for the four new charges: three counts of obtaining money under false pretenses and one count of delivering a fraudulent check over $1,000.

O’Donnell urged that anyone with information contact the Financial Crimes Unit at 444-1000.

amilkovi@projo.com