He’s been accused by five ex-wives, a business partner and an elderly San Diego woman of using them for their money. He’s been convicted of check fraud, charged with lying on election paperwork and disciplined for practicing healthcare without a license.
Now he’s the Republican candidate for Congress in South County.
Jeff Belle landed on the ballot as the only Republican challenging longtime Democratic Rep. Juan Vargas. In June’s primary, 42,000 people voted for Belle — a third of the electorate — and he easily advanced to the general election to face Vargas.
Much about Belle’s background remains hard to discern. His personal finances are a mystery, as he has not filed the financial disclosures he is required to file with the House of Representatives as a congressional candidate.
Belle, 69, describes himself as a private equity CEO and community leader. In a recent podcast appearance, he said he was once a U.S. Senate staffer and a well-connected lobbyist in Sacramento. In an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune, he said he had attended four Academy Awards and a Christmas party at the Reagan White House.
But court records, a state regulatory investigation and other documents — as well as Belle’s own statements — show the candidate has a long history of making false claims about his professional background and failing to pay those he owes money.
So do interviews with a business associate, a friend and five former wives.
Controversy about Belle’s past burst into public view in the Bay Area more than a decade ago when he was elected to a term on the Contra Costa County Board of Education.
There, he was charged with lying about his education in official ballot materials, a charge dismissed in exchange for community service. Local residents criticized him too, taking to public meetings to call him a “chronic liar” and issue calls to “expel Belle.” And he landed in trouble with state licensing officials, who fined him for practicing respiratory therapy without a license.
During Belle’s time in Contra Costa, one of his ex-wives, Casey Jones, also launched a public crusade against him, writing publicly about their three-month marriage in a memoir, in comments to local news media and in a Facebook group she created, “Women Against Con Men.” During the brief marriage, Jones says Belle racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt in her name without her permission.
“Jeff destroyed me financially,” she wrote.
According to court records, Belle has been married and divorced at least eight times.
In interviews, Jones and four other former wives recounted similar stories of how they said Belle took advantage of them, and in some cases drove them to the brink of financial ruin.
Of the three other marriages the Union-Tribune could confirm, one former wife declined to comment, and one could not be reached. A third has died.
In a lengthy and at times combative interview, Belle strongly denied the allegations of the five ex-wives who spoke with the Union-Tribune. To Belle, the accusations being leveled at him were what “most women do.”
“I made more money than they made, every one of them,” Belle said from his campaign office in One America Plaza. “Why would I need their money?”
In recent years, Belle has been accused of such behavior in San Diego. In interviews, two local women say he took advantage of their trust to use them for their money.
Upon moving to the region, Belle first lived in the Harbor Club condominiums downtown. One of his neighbors there was Maudie Bobbitt, a retired law enforcement leader who had been the first female assistant sheriff in San Diego County and later the chief of police for UC San Diego.
In an interview, Bobbitt, now 79, described Belle as a close friend and shared photos of them strolling together on the downtown bayfront.
Bobbitt would ultimately loan him about $40,000, she says. Over 2022 and 2023, she wrote him about a dozen checks to help him with his business, according to records shared with the Union-Tribune by Roger Talamantez, who holds Bobbitt’s power of attorney.
Belle was supposed to pay her back, according to Bobbitt and Talamantez.
But throughout the following months, text messages reviewed by the Union-Tribune show Bobbitt repeatedly asked Belle for small repayments of what he owed her. At various points, Belle texted promises that he was minutes away from bringing the money to the front desk of her condo building. She said he never did.
In an interview, Belle acknowledged the debt and that he has not repaid Bobbitt. He initially said Bobbitt’s $40,000 was an investment in his company. Later, in response to a follow-up question, he agreed that Bobbitt’s account was accurate. “That’s true,” he said.
“By the end of this year, it will be paid,” he said of his debts to her.
Bobbitt isn’t as confident.
“This is him. This is his personality,” she said.
Now that Belle is a congressional candidate, Bobbitt said she’s speaking out lest other people trust him with their money.
Belle’s most recent divorce was from Maureen Felix, a physical therapist and clinic owner in National City who immigrated from the Philippines more than 25 years ago. She was married to Belle for about a year before divorcing him in 2024.
On Friday, Aug. 14, 2026, in National City, Maureen Felix — the most recent former wife of congressional candidate Jeff Belle — speaks with The San Diego Union-Tribune about the marriage. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Felix, who has two young children, said she entered the marriage with a healthy small business and no debt. By the time she divorced, she says she was on the cusp of bankruptcy.
During the marriage, Felix says Belle presented himself as a savvy financial adviser, a role for which she paid him a roughly $3,000 monthly salary, payroll records show.
Felix told the Union-Tribune that Belle promised to secure investors, encouraged her to expand her clinic to a second location in Chula Vista and convinced her to take on risky forms of financing.
To finance the expansion, Felix took out nearly $200,000 in merchant cash advances, all of them in her name, financial records reviewed by the Union-Tribune show.
Despite Belle’s plan, new investors never materialized, she said.
On a financial level, Felix says her marriage to Belle left her “underwater.” But on an emotional level, she says it left her feeling traumatized, manipulated and ashamed.
Belle initially denied having anything to do with Felix’s business. After being presented with records showing he had been on its payroll, he said he had developed a “great business plan.”
But Belle would not elaborate or respond to followup questions about whether he promised to secure Felix investors or urged her to get financing for her business.
“If I didn’t leave him, I’d probably be out in the streets,” Felix said. “I came here with two luggages, an immigrant. I have a business of my own, and he still thinks I’m nothing.”
Another of Belle’s former wives, Carmen Zavala, was married to him in the Bay Area from 2011 until divorcing him in 2018. That period of her life would be punctuated by eviction, a call to police after an argument that turned physical and other tumult that made local headlines.
At the time, she defended Belle in a letter to the editor of a local media outlet and said she had helped him pay off his creditors. Today, she sees the marriage as a dark period in her life.
Carmen Zavala, a former wife of Republican congressional candidate Jeff Belle, speaks about their marriage with The San Diego Union-Tribune on Aug. 11, 2026. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
In interviews with the Union-Tribune, Zavala and her daughter blame Belle for the family’s eviction from their home in Contra Costa County. Belle denied that he was responsible.
In court records for that eviction, the couple said their only income came from Zavala’s work as a Lyft driver and Belle’s disability pension and modest stipend as a county board of education trustee, the East Bay Times reported at the time.
The couple separated after their eviction, and Zavala and her daughter said in interviews that for a time the two of them became homeless.
“I went through hell,” said Zavala, now a therapist in Las Vegas. “There are no words to describe this man.”
Holding his rat terrier named Buster, Belle said the only person who has been “more vilified” than he is President Donald Trump.
“They’re jealous,” Belle said of his detractors. “They wish they could come up and do this. If they were so good, why don’t they run for office?”
As a Republican, Belle’s chances of beating Vargas, a Democrat, are slim. The district Belle is seeking to represent is the region’s most heavily Democratic. Vargas, first elected to Congress in 2012, has won every re-election race with at least 65% of the vote.
Nevertheless, Belle likes his odds.
“With some of my challenges in the past, most people wouldn’t have the courage to run, would they?” Belle said.
Belle has won some support for his long-shot congressional bid. His campaign had pulled in nearly $26,000 by the end of June, campaign disclosures show.
The Republican Party of San Diego has not endorsed Belle. His is the only congressional race in San Diego County in which the local party has made no endorsement.
Belle said he didn’t want the party’s support. “I know politics better than them,” he said.
The county party did not return a request for comment.
All five ex-wives who spoke with the Union-Tribune are urging the public not to support his campaign. So is his former stepdaughter, Sarah Sciales, Zavala’s daughter.
“Go gambling instead at this point. Do not put any money toward this man,” Sciales said. “He’s one of the worst human beings I’ve ever encountered in my life.”
Debts, checks and shifting claims
In a recent media appearance, Belle described a colorful life story he said had led him to run for Congress.
He was born in Lake Charles, La., the middle child of seven, before his family later moved to Oklahoma City. While in college there, he said he had an encounter at a campaign event with Don Nickles, who in 1980 was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican from the state and would go on to serve four terms.
That encounter would culminate in a job in the senator’s Washington office in 1987, Belle said in an interview on a podcast called “Fueling Faith.”
“I was so thankful to be in that environment. People don’t know what it’s like to work in Washington. It’s like a dream come true,” he said. “The stuff you see on C-SPAN. I was right there in the middle.”
The Union-Tribune could not confirm that Belle worked in the Senate. The U.S. Senate Historical Office said it could not find his name on any payroll records from the time.
Asked for details, Belle said he had actually not been a staffer for Nickles but rather was an unpaid intern in his Senate office. A resume Belle used in 2012, reviewed by the Union-Tribune, instead said that he interned in Nickles’ campaign office in Oklahoma City.
In the podcast appearance, Belle said his political career did not stop in the Senate. In his telling, he parlayed experience on Capitol Hill into a job as a federal lobbyist throughout the 1990s, working on behalf of clients he said included the American Chiropractic Association and the Muscogee Nation tribe in Oklahoma.
“I was a good Washington, D.C., lobbyist,” Belle told the podcast.
The Muscogee Nation said it was not familiar with Belle.
“Nobody here, past or present, has ever heard of this guy or that he has done any lobbying work on behalf of the Nation,” said tribal spokesperson Jason Salsman.
Belle called that a “lie” and said staffing turnover might be why no one remembered him.
A spokesperson for the American Chiropractic Association declined to comment.
Congressional candidate Jeff Belle speaks during an interview in his campaign office at One America Plaza in downtown San Diego on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Oklahoma lobbying disclosures from the mid-1990s show that Belle lobbied that state’s Legislature, working on behalf of clients including a payphone company, an area drag racing track and a discount eyeglasses store.
In his state lobbying disclosures from the time, Belle noted he gifted multiple government officials “fine cigars” and novels.
To corroborate his lobbying record, Belle directed the Union-Tribune to Jerry Bryant, a car dent repairman in the Oklahoma City area. Bryant said Belle had helped him get a meeting with General Motors, as he wanted a cut of the company’s dent-repair work. It didn’t go anywhere, but Bryant called Belle a “good guy” who’s “solid on what he does and how he does it.”
Oklahoma court records offer another partial view into Belle’s life during the 1990s.
Throughout the decade, eviction proceedings were initiated against him three times, and judgments were handed down against him in all three. In addition, various creditors — including the Oklahoma Tax Commission — won five separate judgments against him.
Oklahoma prosecutors also charged Belle twice that decade with writing bogus checks.
He pleaded guilty to one of those charges. After he was arrested on a longstanding warrant for the other charge in 2007, a judge dismissed it at the prosecutor’s request, “in the best interest of justice,” court records show.
Belle faced another misdemeanor charge for writing a bad check in Florida in 2000. That charge was administratively dismissed in 2006; it was not immediately clear why.
In his interview with the Union-Tribune, Belle said he didn’t remember having been evicted and criminally charged. Then he acknowledged he had been, chalking it up to his not “taking care of business.”
‘I’m not ever going to pay’
Zavala’s life first intersected with Belle’s in the gift shop of a Sacramento hospital. It was a meeting that, in her telling, would wreck her life and prevent her from ever dating or trusting men again.
Throughout the 2000s, Belle had been moving around the United States, working in hospitals through a staffing placement agency, he said in an interview.
On Aug. 11, 2026, Carmen Zavala shows an old photograph of her with her then-husband Jeff Belle, now a Republican candidate for Congress in South County. “I went through hell,” she said of the marriage. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
His trade was respiratory therapy, and he held licenses in Oklahoma, Oregon and Washington, along with a respiratory health business in Oklahoma, state records show.
By 2009, he had made his way to Northern California. One day, as Zavala killed time in the Sacramento hospital gift shop while her son underwent hernia surgery, Belle caught her eye.
Belle was wearing a white coat and a stethoscope, Zavala recalled. But more than his appearance stood out to her — he was complaining to the clerk that he was looking to buy jewelry for a woman he was dating, but nothing in the store was fancy enough.
Zavala and Belle began talking. As she remembered it, he told her he worked in the building and shared a bit about his Christian faith, and they exchanged phone numbers. She was ecstatic to have met a man with a well-paying job who shared her strong religious beliefs.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is it,’” Zavala recalled.
After Belle and Zavala met, they eventually moved together to Contra Costa County. But red flags soon began to emerge, she recalled — and she took on some of his financial burdens.
“I knew my husband’s background when we married. We have worked for six years to pay off his former tax liens, paying them off in December 2013,” she would later write in a 2014 letter to the editor of the Antioch Herald.
In an interview with the Union-Tribune, Zavala said her son had tried to convince her to leave Belle by showing her proof of his criminal record in Oklahoma. But she said her hopes the marriage could become a positive force in her life blinded her.
She blames that in part on her past experiences.
“A lot of women, we come from broken homes, broken marriages, and then we fall for that person that is nice, is attentive to you,” she said.
Zavala also saw hope in a business Belle had opened in 2009 called the Respiratory Clinical Institutes. Through it, Belle taught students how to become respiratory therapists, offering them tutorial and clinical rotation services as they completed their schooling, state records show.
“At that time, I loved him. I was in love. I saw a future in this business,” Zavala said.
But it was that business that first landed Belle in trouble with authorities in California.
In 2012, an investigator with the California Medical Board met with Belle about his practice after he had applied for a state license.
During the interview, Belle appeared wearing a white coat, a stethoscope and a name badge identifying himself as a respiratory care practitioner, despite not having a license in California, according to a citation issued to him by the Respiratory Care Board of California.
Belle abandoned his pursuit of a state license in 2014, and the state board issued a civil penalty later that year for practicing without a license, fining him $8,200. At the time, Belle agreed to pay the fine, but he never has, said Katie Pitt, a manager with the state board.
Belle maintains he did not need a license in California to teach respiratory therapy students.
“They’re wrong,” he said of the fine. “I’m not ever going to pay.”
By the time he was fined, Belle says he was already supplementing his respiratory care work by moonlighting as a lobbyist in Sacramento.
AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Willie Brown, the former San Francisco mayor and California State Assembly speaker, gestures while speaking during the dedication of the Willie L. Brown Jr. Bridge at Treasure Island on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2014, in San Francisco. The western span of the bridge in the background was renamed for Brown. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
In his telling, his crowning achievement there was single-handedly getting the state Legislature to pass legislation in 2013 to rename part of the Bay Bridge after former Assembly speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown by convincing Republican lawmakers to vote for it. He did not specify on whose behalf he was lobbying.
State lobbying disclosures show no record of Belle ever registering as a lobbyist. California anti-corruption law requires lobbyists to register with the state.
Belle says he knowingly didn’t register. “I know you’re supposed to,” he said. “I didn’t.”
To corroborate his claim about the Bay Bridge, Belle directed the Union-Tribune to Jim Brulte, a former Assembly member and California Republican Party chair who Belle said advised him on lobbying Republicans to back the renaming effort. Belle also pointed to Ted Gaines, a former state senator.
In an email, Brulte said that he personally had no role in renaming the Bay Bridge but that Belle’s name sounded “familiar.” Gaines did not return a request for comment.
Belle’s shifting descriptions of his background caught up to him during his time in the Bay Area, after he won his first campaign for elected office.
In 2014, Belle ran for and was elected to a seat on the Contra Costa County Board of Education, defeating opponent Cynthia Ruehlig by 442 votes. He also served on various local citizen committees for tobacco prevention, transportation and emergency medical services.
In his official candidate statement during the race for the Board of Education, he said he had a bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma City University.
Oklahoma City University said Belle had put a “confidentiality hold” on his student records there; the university told news organizations in the mid-2010s that he studied there but did not receive a degree.
In 2015, prosecutors in Contra Costa County charged Belle with a misdemeanor for what they said was lying in the statement he provided for publication in official election materials.
Ted Asregadoo, a spokesperson for the district attorney, said Belle completed community service in exchange for having the case dismissed in 2017.
When Belle ran for re-election the following year, he lost, coming in last in a four-way race.
He maintains the criminal case against him was politically motivated and that he was targeted because he’s a “trash-talking Trump supporter.” He says he thought he had a bachelor’s degree when he filled out the election paperwork.
Belle says he ultimately did earn a bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma City University after completing the necessary credits through University of the Pacific and paying a debt he owed the school for decades.
During an interview, he shared a photo of a diploma, which bore the date 2019. The University of the Pacific did not respond to requests for comment.
Belle also eventually earned a master’s. In 2021, he received a master’s in public administration from American Public University, an online for-profit university, said Frank Tutalo, a spokesperson for the school.
‘I know better’
During his years in San Diego, Belle has made a career pivot to what he says is private equity. In a podcast appearance, he said his firm — Royal Belle Equity Partners — boasted clients ranging from Duke University and pet food suppliers to unspecified companies developing a vaccine for HIV.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires private equity firms to file standard disclosures. There is no record of Royal Belle Equity Partners having done so.
“I’m in investor relations, you don’t have to,” Belle said in his interview.
Congressional candidate Jeff Belle holds his dog Buster during an interview in his campaign office at One America Plaza in downtown San Diego on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
He then said his client was not Duke but rather the University of North Carolina. He then revised that claim to say the client was a company founded by a UNC physician.
Leadership of that company, Couplet Care, described a business relationship with Belle akin to investor relations.
In an interview, CEO Stacie McEntyre said her company — which makes a bassinet that lets new mothers in the hospital more easily reach their newborns — had hired Belle to connect them with angel investors. The company ultimately did secure investors, but none were introduced to them by Belle, she said.
“I would say that everyone we met really appreciated Jeff and valued him pretty highly,” McEntyre added.
Another of Belle’s clients told a similar story.
Scott Allen is the founder of Balconista, which sells tables meant to be mounted on balcony railings. He said Belle had gotten him meetings with venture capitalists and other potential investors. None have yet materialized, but Allen is hopeful they will.
“Jeff has been transparent, and he’s introduced me to people who understand the business world,” Allen said.
California business records show that Royal Belle is owned not by Belle but by an estranged former business associate of his.
Its registered owner is John Bush, a former Irvine resident who now lives in the Philippines. Bush sued Belle in 2023, alleging that Belle posed as a film producer and conned him out of $45,000 with the promise of investing it in Hollywood movies.
Royal Belle’s social media posts describe the company as “one of the most successful film investment firms in the world” and as having worked with “some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry.”
In an interview, Bush said he couldn’t afford to keep pursuing his case. A San Diego judge dismissed it last year after neither party appeared in court.
Belle characterized the money he had gotten from Bush as an investment that didn’t pan out. He accused Bush of incorporating the company name in an attempt to steal Belle’s business.
Bush rues his involvement with Belle, whom he called an “egomaniac” and “con man,” reiterating the claims made in his civil complaint.
“I’m so pissed at myself about this guy, that I let him con me, because I know better,” said Bush, who has since learned about Belle’s criminal history, marriages and controversial time in elected office.
If Bush ever returns to Southern California, Bush said he intends to pursue further legal action against him.
“He’s just out of control,” Bush said.