FBI Investigates Broker’s Sales at S&L; Offices

The FBI is investigating allegations that a North Hollywood investment broker may have misled five Ventura County residents in his handling of up to $123,000 which they thought they were investing with Santa Paula Savings & Loan Assn. and a Los Angeles investment firm, The Times has learned.

The bank fraud investigation opened this week focuses on Gary Spector, a broker for an investment firm called The Holden Group, who sold tax-deferred annuities for the Los Angeles-based company out of office space provided by the five Santa Paula Savings & Loan branches in Ventura County from last February until September.

While Spector was not an employee of the savings and loan, some of his customers thought he was, and believed they were investing money in Holden Group annuities or Santa Paula Savings & Loan annuities, law enforcement sources said. And in one case, an elderly woman has told authorities she thought she was depositing money into a Santa Paula Savings & Loan savings account, the sources said.

In fact, Spector steered $80,000 to $123,000 of the investors’ money into annuities neither controlled by The Holden Group nor insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and in some cases gave the money to a Glendale man who promised a 15% profit on the investments and then absconded with the money, Glendale Police Detective Ruth Feldman said.

Feldman said Spector has said that the Glendale man, Vincent Tarter, also took $20,000 of Spector’s money and has disappeared.

Spector, 33, and Tarter, 31, could not be reached Friday for comment.

Santa Paula Savings & Loan is not the target of the investigation, which focuses on Spector alone, a source told The Times. Spector had gained the confidence of the thrift’s employees and “he had the tellers there at the bank make up cashier’s checks and sent them to Vince, or he got depositors to sign checks,” Feldman said.

“Either the investors thought they were putting money into Santa Paula Savings & Loan or they thought it was The Holden Group,” but dividend checks which Tarter wrote to the investors bounced, Feldman said.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Pargament, who has examined the case against Tarter in Glendale and rejected it for lack of evidence, said, “Holden is a very legitimate company. The L.A. County employees’ 401-k plan is invested in Holden.”

Allan D. Gross, senior vice president of Santa Paula Savings & Loan, declared that the Ventura County thrift had no knowledge of the alleged fraud or involvement in any of the questionable transactions.

“In an industry that’s being raked over the coals, we feel that, in 100 years of operation, we haven’t done anything wrong,” he said.

Gross said Friday that all the investors have been reimbursed for their losses or had their investment accounts rectified by The Holden Group, which employed Spector until he quit in September.

Edward Colton, chief investment officer of The Holden Group, said, “We’re assisting some of the customers in getting their money back,” but he declined to comment further.

The FBI investigation follows an inquiry first opened by Glendale police and later picked up by Santa Paula police. The FBI said Friday it would neither confirm nor deny that the investigation was opened.

While Santa Paula police also would not discuss their investigation, Feldman said Spector told Glendale police that he met Tarter in a restaurant in the Van Nuys area last May and began discussing investment ideas.

“Gary was very taken with him,” and steered some of his Holden Group clients’ investments to Tarter, who claimed to have an import-export business that could return investors a 15% profit, Feldman said.

The case surfaced last year when Kris Knutsen of Glendale complained to police there that she believed her parents were being swindled, Feldman said.

Ethel and George Knutsen had invested thousands of dollars with Tarter, who then did not pay money he owed them from the investment, Kris Knutsen said.

After they sued him in an attempt to recoup most of their $13,832 investment, Tarter showed them a $24,000 check made out to him from a Santa Paula Savings & Loan account in the name of Santa Paula resident Clara Byerts and told them he was going to use that money to pay them back, Knutsen said. At that point, Knutsen said, she went to police.

Tarter later signed papers in Glendale Municipal Court agreeing to pay the Knutsens a settlement of $12,145.17, including interest and court costs, according to court documents.

Investigators later learned that Byerts, 79, had cashed in a life insurance policy and deposited it with Spector at a Santa Paula Savings & Loan branch, believing the money had been deposited into her savings account. Byerts declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Feldman said, Spector had been accepting money from other customers and either diverting the money to Tarter or investing it in tax-deferred annuity accounts at a life insurance company neither controlled by The Holden Group nor insured by the FDIC.

An annuity allows investors to withdraw up to 10% of their account per year and put off paying taxes on the interest until five years after the account is established, Gross said.

One customer, Sidney Adams, 62, of Oxnard said he had misgivings after investing money in an annuity handled by Spector at a Santa Paula Savings & Loan branch in April.

Adams said he took $5,000 from his savings account at California Federal Bank and walked across the street to the Santa Paula Savings & Loan branch after seeing a sign in its window advertising a tax-deferred account that would pay 9.25% interest.

“Gary was talking so fast and working so fast I really didn’t quite get the understanding of what was going on,” said Adams, a retired mail carrier.

But Adams said he later invested another $10,000 in the account, only to discover that that money had been diverted to a non-insured IRA account at another institution.

The Holden Group rectified the situation after a two-month interval during which, Adams said, “I was scared to death.”

The three other investors could not be reached for comment.

Feldman said Tarter was arrested on suspicion of grand theft and released on $5,000 bail Oct. 26. But Pargament rejected the case and Tarter’s bail was lifted. Despite that, detectives are continuing their investigation, she said.

Feldman said Glendale police questioned Spector in November but released him without charging him.