The Region - News from May 2, 1986

Former baseball great Harmon Killebrew and former Idaho Rep. Ralph Harding were among the victims swindled in a scheme to develop an exclusive community of estate homes and a golf course in Rancho Mirage, a Los Angeles federal grand jury indictment alleges. The indictment charges Jack Dean Franks, 43, a former Palm Springs real estate developer, with mail and wire fraud in allegedly diverting $1,590,000 in investors’ money from a project known as RM 18 for his own use. The project, which supposedly was to have been developed by Franks’ JDF Financial Corp., proposed the building of 18 estate homes on 1- to 1 1/2-acre sites, priced at $1.5 million for the land alone. Assistant U.S. Atty. James R. Asperger said Franks persuaded Killebrew and Hardy to help recruit investors.