FOR SWINDLER IT'S HAIR TODAY - GONE TOMORROW

Hair Brained

A SERIAL conman who claimed his yogurt substance was the fountain of youth, is today behind bars for scamming investors and using the money to fund a lavish lifestyle.

Joseph Fox Batista told people that he could reverse visible signs of aging, regrow hair on balding people and even turn grey hair dark again.

The 55-year-old claimed that his process, which the well known natural enzyme telomerase entered the body through yogurt enzymes, would revolutionize the skin care industry.

But now he's behind bars, accused of scamming his yogurt cream investors and spending their money on a luxury apartment, fancy dinners, alcohol, and, one victim says, drugs.

The "self taught microbiologist" sold stock in his yogurt cream company well enough to rope at least 59 investors including a pulmonologist at Jackson South Community Hospital, who now laughs about losing $2,000 but being constantly entertained by Fox's wackily worded e-mail updates.

He is now accused of misusing $380,000 that was intended to grow his company, Telogenesis Inc.

The scam was uncovered when one disgruntled investor, down $28,000, complained to Florida's Office of Financial Regulation.

State investigators found that though he claimed investors' money was being spent on clinical trials, lab testing, and marketing, virtually all of it funded Fox's lifestyle.

Perhaps however, investors may have looked harder at the man behind the modern day fountain of youth.

In the past he claimed to be a nephew of former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, who changed his name to protect himself from the Castro regime.

He also once sold nine $20,000 machines touted for their ability to weigh the amount of gold in any object, then never delivered because, he said, they were stolen by "the secret police, or whoever controls the currency."

Then, after arriving homeless in Miami Beach three years ago, he sold investors on this process.

However in a jailhouse interview with The Miami Herald Fox claimed the charges of grand theft and organized scheming to defraud was persecution from "shady forces, possibly members of the powerful and very jealous hair transplant industry.

He told the paper: "Obviously, I have to be paid. I'm the CEO of a corporation. The CEO gets at least $100,000 a year."

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