SYRACUSE, Utah — Ron Osborn has taught generations of kids how to win.
Softball, baseball, basketball, football — Osborn has coached them all at schools and leagues around Davis County. At age 78, Osborn has a batting cage behind his house in Syracuse, where he drops balls into the auger of the pitching machine and teaches T-ballers to high schoolers how to swing.
“I'm a trusting guy,” Osborn says. “You work with the youth your whole life, and they're so pure, beautiful in their families. And you want to help people that need it.”
Osborn says that desire to help is one reason he started loaning money to a man who — it turned out — had been convicted of fraud.
“The total is embarrassing,” Osborn told FOX 13 News in an interview. It was “$405,000 over the last three years.”
Osborn was at risk of losing — money he saved for retirement and his house with that batting cage in the backyard. But the man charged with defrauding him made him another offer.
Tight spot
When he wasn’t coaching and raising a family of his own, Osborn owned various franchises over the years. One was a Batteries Plus store. Osborn moved his store a few doors down and needed some work done.
He hired Nathan Herr, an electrician. The pair got to talking.
Osborn says Herr soon told him his electrical business was doing well, but some accounts were slow to pay.
“He said, ‘I'm behind on a tight spot,’” Osborn recalled. “’I've got a ton of money coming in.’ And being in business, I knew how it was.”
Hill Air Force Base was one of Osborn’s accounts at Batteries Plus, he said in one example. It often took the base 60 to 90 days to pay.
Osborn agreed to loan Herr about $20,000. More loans followed, eventually reaching that more than $400,000, according to Osborn and discussions later in court.
Osborn didn’t know Herr, who turned 42 last year, had prior convictions for theft and fraud and had served time in Utah’s prison system. Herr kept promising to repay the money.
Court records indicate 11 of his checks to Osborn bounced. Police got involved after Herr forged his own mother’s signature on one check.
Herr pleaded guilty in January in state court to one count of fraud and one count of issuing a bad check. Herr was free pending sentencing and still telling Osborn in calls and text messages he would repay him.
But Herr, according to Osborn, his attorney and messages reviewed by FOX 13, said he couldn’t do that if he was in prison. He told Osborn he needed him to ask the judge to not issue a prison sentence.
To Osborn, it looked like the only way to keep his house.
“Unless he pays me, I am going to be forced to sell it,” Osborn told FOX 13.
The money he had loaned Herr came from a home equity line of credit.
Paid and clear
At a February hearing at the state courthouse in Farmington, in which Herr was supposed to be sentenced, Osborn, prosecutors and Herr asked the judge for a delay.
“Defendant would agree to pay complete restitution of $410,000 before sentencing next week,” Deputy Davis County Attorney Nathanael Swift explained to the judge.
“And if it’s not paid before sentencing next week,” Swift continued, “that means paid and clear to the victim’s account, then [Herr] agrees he would go to prison.”
“Do you have the wherewithal to get it done?” asked 2nd District Judge Ronald Russell.
“Yeah,” Herr, who was acting as his own attorney, replied. “I’ll have him paid on Wednesday and then clear it by the time we get back here on Monday.”
Wednesday and Monday came with no payment to Osborn. Sentencing was postponed another three weeks.
Meanwhile, Osborn kept hoping for his money, telling FOX 13 again outside the courtroom that he’d get nothing if Herr was sentenced to prison and couldn’t work.
Low rate of return
Osborn hasn’t been the only Utahn waiting to be repaid.
As of 2024, Utah district courts reported $70 million in outstanding restitution, fees and fines. Of that, almost $10 million was more than three years old.
There’s no data on how many Utah crime victims actually receive court-ordered restitution, but in his work, Alan Rosca calls it rare, “low, single-digit percentage points.”
Rosca is an investment fraud lawyer. His clients have included victims of the Rust Rare Coin silver trading scheme. A federal judge called it one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in Utah history.
While Utah judges can order defendants to pay restitution, some just can’t pay.
“Oftentimes,” Rosca said, “by the time those defendants are before the judge awaiting sentencing, they just don't have two nickels to rub together.”
Court in session
It’s not clear what Herr did with the money Osborn loaned him, but he claimed he didn’t have any of it at his March sentencing.
“I'm embarrassed,” Osborn told the judge during his victim’s statement.
The entire courtroom listened as Osborn told the judge what losing more than $400,000 had done to him.
“I've been told every day for two years that the money was coming,” Osborn said.
He choked up talking about his family — three children, nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
“They are the real victims here, and they will suffer,” Osborn said. “You work your whole life in hopes of passing that down, and now I have nothing left.”
Still, Osborn offered Herr one more chance.
“If, for some reason, Mr. Herr could come up with the money,” Osborn said, “I would not be opposed to adjusting the sentence.”
Herr told the judge he always intended to repay the money.
“There’s no words I could say to get through how bad I do feel,” Herr said, “what it's done for…. Ron is an amazing man, and he's a great guy.”
There were no more chances from 2nd District Court Judge Ronald Russell.
“Clearly,” Russell told Herr, “this is a case that does indicate prison. So even if you had been able to come up with the money, I would have been faced with that situation… that's what this case calls for.”
Russell sentenced Herr to one to 15 years in prison on both counts and ordered they be served consecutively. That means Herr could be in prison for as long as 30 years. Bailiffs handcuffed him and walked him out of the courtroom and into a holding area until he could be driven to jail and then to prison.
Outside the courthouse, Osborn was more accepting of the prison sentence, saying the sound of the handcuffs clasping Herr was a relief.
"I mean, this has gone on for two-and-a-half years,” Osborn said.
“Justice was served.”
Osborn is in the process of selling his house and batting cage and downsizing to something he can afford.
Herr still has pending charges in state court in Ogden, accused of defrauding someone else.