Probe Figure Ties Top Officials, Prostitutes

Richard Raymond Keith, who has been indicted by a federal grand jury in the ongoing corruption investigation of Orange County fireworks magnate W. Patrick Moriarty, said in an interview this week that he helped arrange prostitutes for legislators, local Southern California politicians and bank officials on Moriarty’s behalf.

“I believe the total money Pat Moriarty and his associates spent on hookers between 1978 or 1979 and the present was between $600,000 and $750,000,” Keith said.

Keith said he came to that figure by adding the amounts that he delivered to various prostitutes and what he believed two other associates and Moriarty delivered to prostitutes. He personally delivered between $300,000 and $400,000, he said.

“There were some evenings when I had three or four parties going,” Keith explained, saying that sometimes there were simultaneous parties in Orange County, Los Angeles and Sacramento. Keith told essentially the same story to KCBS-TV (Channel 2) in an interview with the Los Angeles station aired Friday. This is the first time that a close Moriarty associate has publicly admitted providing prostitutes on Moriarty’s behalf.

Racketeering Charges

Moriarty, who is under indictment on racketeering charges in connection with the award of a card club license in the City of Commerce, is the target of a probe into his political contributions and business and banking practices by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles and the Orange County district attorney.

Keith, 47, was expected to plead guilty on five counts of tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud and to cooperate with authorities in the Moriarty investigation, but he said Wednesday that he had changed his mind. Keith claimed that information he had given investigators had been leaked to the news media and other targets of the probe. He blamed the leaks on Orange County investigators, a charge denied by Orange County Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks. Keith said he was now speaking to reporters because he thought such leaks violated his agreement with authorities.

“Now I’m going to tell the whole story,” Keith told The Times.

Keith was re-indicted Thursday on 13 counts of evading taxes, making a false declaration of bankruptcy and making false statements to a federally insured bank.

In the Times interviews, Keith named three state legislators, one member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, a member of the Long Beach City Council and numerous Orange County bank officials to whom he said prostitutes had been provided.

10 Legislators

Prostitutes, Keith told The Times, were provided to California politicians, business associates, bankers and friends of Moriarty when they were in Tokyo, San Francisco, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orange County, Palm Springs, Riverside, San Diego, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Mobile, Chicago, Washington and New York. He said the arrangements were made by a prostitute in Los Angeles who called friends in the other cities.

Payment for the services in other cities was made through the Los Angeles prostitute, Keith said.

Payments were mostly made in cash, and possibly a few checks were written, Keith said.

In the television interview, he did not give a breakdown of officials, saying only that he had “direct knowledge” that prostitutes were provided to “at least 10 people in state politics.” He did not name the officials or others who he said had received prostitutes.

Keith said he thought as much as $40,000 or $50,000 a month was spent on prostitutes, and he said that the prostitution activity increased in 1981, when Moriarty was trying to win approval of fireworks legislation he was supporting in Sacramento. He said he did not know if the acts of prostitution actually won votes from politicians, but he said it apparently gave Moriarty and his associates “instant access” to the politicians by developing a sort of “cronyism.”

The Los Angeles television station said Keith, who was interviewed near his Palm Springs home, named the public officials and a banker, but they were not identified in the broadcast.

Keith told The Times that politicians sometimes would call Moriarty’s office to arrange for prostitutes, and at other times they were arranged by a lobbyist.

In September, 1984, The Times reported that then-Assemblyman Bruce Young (D-Norwalk) was the first legislator whose name had surfaced in the probe of allegations that Moriarty or his associates provided prostitutes for bankers and public officials.

Young was provided with prostitutes on at least two occasions, according to authoritative sources, including people who say they were present on one or the other occasion. Young denied the allegations, and Moriarty issued a denial through his attorney.