9 Ordered to Refund Fees in Securities Case

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has ordered nine securities dealers and salesmen to refund nearly $550,000 in commissions to investors who put money into an allegedly fraudulent tax shelter program in 1977.

Judge Norman R. Dowds also issued a permanent injunction barring the individuals and three suspended corporations from offering and selling securities in California without approval of the state Department of Corporations.

The amount of the commissions involved in the judgment range from $1,500 to $230,000, according to Deputy Atty. Gen. Lawrence P. Scherb II, who prosecuted the case.

The case is the last of a series of four filed by the state against entities linked to Cal-Am Corp. and its president, Joseph R. Laird Jr., which were ordered to pay nearly $30 million in civil penalties in a 1982 case.

Only two of the nine individuals named in the fourth case showed up for the trial in Dowds’ court this month, and none of the three corporations, which have been suspended, were represented. The two men who defended themselves in court were Earl L. Martinson and Albert N. Baxter. Corporate defendants were Permco, Legal Mortgage Corp. and Cal-Am Sales Corp., all of which were owned and operated by Laird, who was convicted in federal court last year in a false tax filing case, Scherb said.

Other individuals named defendants were Warren Anderson, John Eagen, Roger Hainline, Robert Morley, Charles Price, Robert Riley and Rudy Sickler.