Was he a television evangelist? A crooked savings-and-loan operator? An infomercial huckster?

No, according to the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office. He promised tickets. Lots of tickets. Tickets to concerts, tickets to baseball games, tickets to the Rose Bowl. And victims apparently couldn’t part with their money fast enough, giving it to the convincing man claiming to be a ticket broker.

Usually, he took their money and ran, according to investigators.

Stephan Swintosky, 24, is behind bars in Pittsburgh, facing charges in three different Pennsylvania cases all related to ticket scams.

He was ordered held for trial June 28 on 11 charges of theft by deception and theft by failure to make required disposition of funds. He already has a trial date in October on seven earlier counts for allegedly swindling 26 people in the Pittsburgh area out of $55,000.

Outside the hearing, investigator Fran Laquatra said the boyish-looking defendant may have pocketed more than $1 million in a “career” that began at 16 years old.

Swintosky was already free on his own recognizance in Cambria County, Penn., on similar charges. Because he is alleged to have violated that personal recognizance bond, he won’t be released despite the $20,000 bail set in Pittsburgh on the latest round of charges.

Allegheny County Assistant D.A. Russ Broman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he will seek to lump the new charges in with those already scheduled to be heard before judge Terrence O’Brien on October 10.

Apparently, Swintosky had a real gift for the art of the deal – some of his victims came back for more even after he’d taken their money and failed to produce the goods.

Traci Davis of East Liverpool, Ohio, was among the overly trusting.

Responding in 1997 to an ad in the Post-Gazette, she purchased and received a pair of Pittsburgh Steelers season tickets for $1,300, according to the paper.

But additional Steelers tickets she ordered never materialized. Neither did the concert tickets, nor the golf tournament tickets. Ditto the Rose Bowl tickets. Still, she “trusted his blue eyes,” according to the Post-Gazette.

She trusted them so much that in 1998, she and a partner paid $2,000 more for 50 Jimmy Buffett tickets. They received two tickets and none of their money back.

Davis came forward to report Swintosky because she thought she might get her money back – until she learned how much money authorities said he’d swindled from others. “Then I said, ‘No way,'” Davis told the Post-Gazette.

Davis is out $16,800, according to the paper.