The way he tells it, Richard T. Saler has been getting a bad rap.
``Richard, the con man,'' he says, mimicking relatives, creditors, former employees, disappointed partners. ``Richard, the scam artist.''
Chain-smoking Marlboro Lights late one night at the stucco house in Villanova where he publishes advertising-filled tabloids for events such as the Philadelphia Flower
Show and the Devon Horse Show, Saler said he has deserved none of it.
Not the nine months he served in prison after pleading guilty in 1990 to theft for plundering the trust fund. Not the $2 million in damages the Supreme Court of New York ordered him to pay his father, Philadelphia lawyer Harold Saler, on top of the missing half-million.
Certainly not the charges of forgery and credit-card fraud he is scheduled to face this month in a Narberth district court preliminary hearing.
Those charges could send Saler back to prison and topple his latest business venture - publishing In Transit, a free tabloid with ads aimed at SEPTA bus and train riders. SEPTA gave Saler a five-year contract, hoping the newspaper would make money. But since Saler's past came to light after his arrest in July, the transit agency has been, in the words of a spokesman, ``evaluating the relationship.''
During more than five hours of conversations since the arrest, Saler, 54, a Merion native whose immigrant grandfather founded a chain of dairy stores, has sought to explain his rocky work history and salvage his reputation.
In the process, he has provided a glimpse into the world of a man who navigated a career that took him from canning food in Puerto Rico to removing graffiti in Philadelphia to selling ads on the Main Line, leaving in his wake one felony, at least 11 civil judgments against him for a total of $3.4 million, and a raft of angry people.
