"Mr. Jones is becoming a rather notorious individual in Anne Arundel County, with the undersigned receiving numerous allegations on a regular basis of his nebulous and possibly illegal activities. The undersigned would rate Mr. Jones as a very good con man who knows the system well and can manipulate it to his advantage."

-- Agent Mallory S. Fisher of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Service's Division of Parole and Probation, in a report on Gino Marchetti Jones.

He's no killer or rapist, but almost every police officer in AnneArundel County knows or knows of Gino Jones. A decade of frequent run-ins with the law and a reputation as a grifter specializing in the roadside sale of used cars have made Gino Marchetti Jones one of the best-known names in the county's police stations and courthouses.

Jones acknowledges his notoriety -- and will tell you he regrets his involvement in illegal pursuits ranging from making crank telephone calls and selling cocaine to playing a key role in an auto theft ring that moved 200 cars a year.

But he's a legitimate businessman now,he says, a self-employed "car cleaner."

And he complains that area lawmen are harassing him because of his criminal past and a name that is unforgettable to anyone who remembers the glory years of the Baltimore Colts.

He was born in the fall of 1960, when the two-time defending world champion Colts were led on defense by a future Hall of Famer named Gino Marchetti, who went on to give the world the Gino Giant hamburger while becoming a fast-food tycoon.

"If you saw 'Brooks Robinson Jones' or 'Al Capone Jones' on the docket, you'd notice them, too," Jones said in the county courthouse while awaiting the start of a February court hearing. At one point during the hearing, Judge Raymond G. Thieme Jr., a Baltimore native and Colts fan, inadvertently referred to Jones as "Mr. Marchetti."

The hearing had been convened to draft a payment schedule for restitution ordered when Jones pleaded guilty to four counts of cocaine distribution and 11 counts of auto theft in 1988.

In that case, Jones received a 20-year suspended sentence. Before being sentenced, Jones wrote the judge a letter reminding him that he had cooperated with state police investigations.

A suspended sentence of 20 years.

Three years later, Jones is still slipping through the system with a steady string of arrests that, more often that not, end up with the charges dismissed. Failure to compensate his victims as ordered by the court. Instant used car lots on North County street corners.

Victims of his deeds find all this amazing and infuriating.

Nearly all who have met Jones comment on his remarkably charming personality, his way of oozing sincerity while lying through his teeth. He's a brilliant con artist, they say. A polite and -- with clean, pressed jeans, neat, dirty-blond hair and green eyes -- a handsome one at that.

Prosecutors and some police officers call him the most likable criminal they've ever encountered, adding he has never been known to be involved in serious violence. Just fraud.

Said Assistant State's Attorney Trevor A. Kiessling Jr., who prosecuted Jones in the auto theft case (and represented Jones' ex-wife in divorce proceedings): "Gino Jones is one of those kinds of people who just has excellent business sense. He sees opportunities, and he knows how to grasp them.

"Gino's problem, as I always saw it, was he would make a grasp for the quick buck," Kiessling added. "If that man would just agree to be straight the rest of his life, he'd make a fortune."

Rita Rae Elkins, Jones' ex-wife, said hehas the ability to be a millionaire in the car business.

Fisher, Jones' probation officer, called him a "slick and manipulative individual" who "always seems to have several different deals working simultaneously." He also noted: "It seems such a shame for a person with as much intelligence as Mr. Jones to squander such in these illicit activities rather than to use his talents for legitimate gains."

Fisher's comments were made in probation reports last year. Since then, state probation officials have decided that Jones violated the terms of his probation and asked for a bench warrant for his arrest. Judge Thieme issued a warrant April 5. Then on Thursday, he issued four more warrants for violation of probation.

As of Friday, he remained afree man.

Action by law enforcement agencies would please some ofJones' victims -- such as a woman who made 48 monthly payments of $275 on a car she bought from Jones. The car was seized as stolen goods after she had made only three payments.

Or the man who bought a truck from Jones and then couldn't get clear title on it because of Jones' dishonest dealings with the state Motor Vehicle Administration.Donald Enste said: "I cannot imagine that this guy is still running around. . . . He should have been run out of town."

Enste said he could have "killed" Jones after his wife received ominous, anonymous phone calls the night she appeared on a television news series about Jones. The series, by consumer reporter Dick Gelfman, now of WJZ-TV but then of WBAL-TV, looked at Jones' shady used-car sales techniques.

Enste said he later spotted Jones and chased him down Ritchie Highway, hoping to beat him up, but Jones jumped a fence and escaped.

Stories like these have made Jones well known to the officers who patrol Glen Burnie.

"The officers in the Northern District, especially the ones who have been around awhile, are very familiar with him, and they know of him," said V. Richard Molloy, county police spokesman. He declined to elaborate, citing laws barring police from discussing criminal histories.

MVA investigators say they've just about given up trying to discipline Jones because they have "investigated himto death" with little result. And even if they caught him red-handed, there is little they could do to him, since Jones has not been licensed by the state to sell cars since 1984.

Robert Bower, investigator in the MVA dealers' licensing department, said the agency still gets calls every couple of months from people complaining about vehicles they bought from Gino Jones.

The callers are referred to the county State's Attorney's Office. Jones was most recently charged with selling cars without a license in 1989. The case was dropped because of insufficient evidence, said Assistant State's Attorney William C. Mulford II.

Bower says Jones is "curbstoning," dealing in used cars for profit by selling them from the side of the road. You can't miss Jones' cars, say area auto dealers, MVA investigators and police. They are always marked with inch-wide letters in white shoe polish.

Last week, cars of that description were seen on Mountain Road and at the intersection of Quarterfield and Old Stage roads, areas described by authorities as among Jones' favorite places to do business. The cars were unattended, and a phone number was left on each windshield.

Dialing the number hooks up the prospective buyer to an answering machine.

Jones said he is legitimately self-employed as a "car cleaner," restoring vehicles to near-showroom appearance. "But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes fix up a car and sell it to supplement my income," he added.

He is loathed and feared by many of the usedcar dealers in Glen Burnie and Pasadena -- loathed to the point thatmany refuse to do business with him, and feared because of what theybelieve, but admit they can't prove, is his penchant for retaliatingwith vandalism.

Said one used car dealer, speaking on the condition that he not be identified: "Whenever he brings me a car, I'm goingto look at it and say, 'No, Gino, you want too much money,' or something like that because I know what the results will be if I just tellhim I won't do business with him. I've got a $20,000 car out there that can be destroyed in a matter of minutes."

More than one used car dealer complained that Jones only adds more tarnish to their less-than-exemplary public image.

While awaiting trial a month ago in Circuit Court on a charge of "unauthorized use" of a car, Jones said the continued harassment by police has forced him to accept his lawyer's advice to move out of the area and start life anew.

"I'll be inFlorida within 60 days," he vowed.

Told of Jones' announced plans, some law enforcement officials laughed. Gino Marchetti Jones, they said, has been saying that for years.

And Bower, who has been following Jones for most of the eight years he has been an MVA investigator, said: "I wish he would move to Florida. I think the citizens of Anne Arundel County would be safer, or at least more secure in their financial situations."

*

"The undersigned believes Mr. Jones is a character who will continue to operate on the fringes of legitimacy."

-- Probation agent Mallory S. Fisher.

When Gino Jones goes to court, he lets his lawyer, the highly regarded T. Joseph Touhey Jr., do all the talking.

At last month's Circuit Court trial, Touhey was clearly irritated with a prosecutor's refusal to drop a case thatseemed laughably weak.

"I have not the foggiest notion why the state is insisting on wasting this court's time with this charade," Touhey barked.

In the charging document, police said a woman described as Jones' girlfriend had told them she had not given permission forJones to take her car from the parking lot at Marley Station, where she was working as a department store clerk.

But the girlfriend later changed her story, telling police that she had given Jones permission to use the car. Thus, the prosecution had no witness and, in Touhey's mind, no reason to proceed with the case.

The girlfriend, wearing a floral dress and gold jewelry, her hair up, was striking enough to draw glances from courthouse regulars. She sat quietly in the courtroom and listened to Assistant State's Attorney Lawrence J. Caporale tell the judge the girlfriend would testify that she had given Jones permission to use the car.

Circuit Judge Eugene M. Lerner asked the prosecutor, "Well, why did you bring this case if you have no case?" Lerner then threw out the case.

Muttering, "Let's get out ofhere," Touhey led Jones and his girlfriend from the courtroom.

Jones displayed no particular emotion as he hurried from the courthouse. He's been charged with crimes ranging from burglary to credit cardfraud in recent years, but he has not been convicted on any of thosecharges.

In February, he went to District Court in Glen Burnie, charged with a credit card offense. The charging document said he and another man had gone on a shopping spree at Marley Station, using a credit card that had been reported stolen to buy more than $3,000 in jewelry from three stores. But when a clerk at a fourth store noticed the card was stolen and called security, the men fled, the document says.

The next day, Jones was arrested wearing a Gucci watch and a 14-karat gold bracelet identified as those purchased at Marley Station, the document says. At his trial, however, prosecutors dropped charges because a key witness did not show up, and because the prosecutors had spent all their allowed postponements in the case.

Jones andanother man were charged with the April 1990 burglary of a Pasadena home after a store clerk identified Jones as the man who tried to usea credit card taken in the burglary to pay for a $450 purchase.

Assistant State's Attorney Mulford said the burglary charge against Jones will be dropped because the other man's fingerprints had been found at the house and he had confessed to the burglary. A credit card offense likely will be dropped because the clerk may be unavailable totestify.

But Jones hasn't always beaten the rap. He was convictedof telephone misuse in 1983 and of selling cars without a license in1985.

And in April 1989, he went to jail after Lerner sentenced him to 60 days, with 30 days suspended, after finding him guilty of driving with a suspended license.

In a subsequent report, probation agent Fisher noted: "It came as quite a surprise to Mr. Jones to receive jail time for the above offense."

*

"The world does not revolve around a '69 Chevy."

-- Gino Marchetti Jones, responding to adisgruntled used-car customer's complaints, as quoted in Motor Vehicle Administration records.

The son of a Glen Burnie used car dealer, Gino Jones says cars are what he knows. At an early age, he learned there was money in selling them.

The only problem was that he didn't bother to get a license to do so.

Charged in 1983 with selling cars without a license, he was given probation before judgment. Bower, the MVA investigator, said he already had suspicions that Jones was a shady operator, but he recalls the judge telling Jones that if he wanted to sell used cars, he would have to get a license.

Bower said, "We were more or less bound to give him one even though we had our apprehensions."

In little more than a year, Jones' dealer license was revoked.

The MVA file cites allegations of selling mechanically unfit vehicles and refusing to satisfactorily respond to the resulting complaints. One man told the MVA that when he brought the carback to Jones for repairs, he returned to find its hard-to-replace hubcaps missing. Jones replied that "maybe (Jones' ) brother took themoff to keep them from being taken."

Jones also was accused of selling cars and not forwarding the tax collected to the MVA, leaving buyers unable to get permanent tags or clear titles, and of forging signatures on repossession paperwork to collect insurance money for a car destroyed in a fire.

MVA records show Jones liked to run classified advertisements in the newspaper urging potential buyers to call "Gene Jones."

For years, Jones was a licensed dealer in South Carolina. It wasn't until last June that South Carolina revoked his wholesale dealer license on the ground that there was no evidence of a dealership at the Greer, S.C., address he listed as his place of business.

Jones' activities also have drawn the interest of other agencies.

Supporting Bower's claims that Jones continues his curbstone operation are 22 zoning violations issued by the county Zoning Department. Jamie Baer, an assistant county attorney, said the citations, which charge Jones with operating a wholesale used car dealership in a residential neighborhood, carry fines totaling $6,700.

He is scheduled to stand trial on those charges May 18. Baer said that if Jones does not pay and does not appear in court to answer the charges, the fines can be tripled.

Bowers explained Jones' continued success: "Hehas contacts in the business and he pays with cash."

*

"Mr. Jones relates that he does not adjust well to accommodations in the Anne Arundel County Detention Center. . . . Due to his fear of incarceration, the undersigned believes he will eventually pay all money owed."

-- Probation agent Mallory S. Fisher

The scam that has left Jones at the edge of a prison cell door was simple and slick:

Prosecutors said members of an auto theft ring would buy salvaged cars at auctions and steal cars and trucks from dealerships in Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard counties; sometimes they just grabbed the keys from the showroom pegboard and drove off. Other times, they would takea car out for a test drive and make a copy of the keys so they couldsteal it later.

Jones and his cohorts would switch the vehicle's identification numbers and sell the stolen cars and trucks to unsuspecting buyers or dealerships. An MVA employee, later convicted of bribery, would approve forged title documents in connection with the ring's activities.

But an informant tipped state police on the operation, and troopers working undercover arrested Jones and another gang member, Jimmy Davis, who eventually was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Jones also was charged with selling cocaine. Court records include transcripts from tapes capturing Jones and the undercover trooperdiscussing bass fishing -- and Jones saying he sells ounces of cocaine for $1,800 each.

Jones pleaded guilty to four counts of cocainedistribution and 11 counts of auto theft, but received no prison time.

A law enforcement source close to the case said Jones aided a police investigation into area cocaine dealers. And as he was being arrested, he told police he had "second-hand" information on a murder and a counterfeiting ring, court records show.

Jones received a 20-year prison sentence, with five years on probation and an order to pay more than $20,000 in restitution.

Walter Skorko, Jones' probation agent, initially told a reporter Jones was in compliance with the terms of his probation. And a Feb. 28 report prepared by Skorko and approved by his supervisor, James McBride, referred to Judge Thieme's order and said, "All monies in this case have been paid in full."

But Susan Kaskie, a spokeswoman for the Division of Parole and Probation, said records indicate otherwise. She said last week that Jones has violated the terms of his probation because he has not followed a court-ordered payment schedule for restitution.

In February, Jones said: "I don't sleep well. I've got a 20-year sentence hanging over my head."

Under state law, a judge can order Jones to serve the suspended portion of his sentence if he is found guilty of violating theterms of the probation.