Control of Will Removed From S&L; Chief’s Aide : Target of Fraud Inquiry Is Owner’s Sole Beneficiary

Janet McKinzie, the woman being investigated in a bank fraud and embezzlement case stemming from the collapse of North America Savings & Loan Assn., has been barred, at least temporarily, from administering the will of the S&L;’s owner, who died in a car crash just hours before state regulators seized the Santa Ana institution Jan. 16.

McKinzie, Duyane Christensen’s confidante and business manager, agreed in probate court papers in Nevada to a federal regulatory agency’s demand that her powers as a court-appointed special administrator of Christensen’s will be suspended until further notice. No one was named to act in her place.

Christensen, North America S&L;’s founder and sole owner, lived in Newport Beach but maintained his official address in Stateline, Nev.

Attorneys for the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp., which put the S&L; into receivership on Jan. 23, argued that McKinzie’s reasons for acting as a special administrator no longer exist and that McKinzie was not healthy enough to handle her probate duties.

Pleading poor health, McKinzie missed a deposition scheduled last week by Imperial Bank, which is suing her in connection with a $2-million loan extension for Christensen.

She reportedly had left her Newport Beach home for a rest home, but a friend said he went to the rest home last Saturday only to find that she had checked herself out.

McKinzie now is on a one-week vacation with Virginia Walker, the manager of her Elk Grove company, Walker’s roommate said. The roommate would not say where they went.

FBI, State Conducting Inquiries

The FBI and the state attorney general’s office have said that they are conducting bank fraud and embezzlement investigations involving up to $20 million in missing funds. The state investigation is focusing on McKinzie.

State and federal regulators already have accused Christensen in Orange County Superior Court papers of falsifying records, forging signatures and making questionable payments totaling more than $4 million to himself and McKinzie in what one regulator called the most massive fraud he had ever seen at an S&L.;

The FBI said in U.S. District Court documents this week that its search of a Westwood motel room used by a friend of Christensen turned up 47 North America S&L; certificates of deposit worth a total of $15.3 million in the names of Christensen, McKinzie and others.

Agents also seized S&L; records and copies of Christensen’s tax forms and financial statements. Regulators accuse the friend, Roy Skluth, of using fake certificates of deposit to obtain a $450,000 loan from Security Pacific National Bank. Only $15,000 had been withdrawn from the loan amount, however.

McKinzie, Christensen’s constant companion in the last six or seven years, has previously refused to comment, and her lawyer has refused to answer repeated telephone calls to his office.

McKinzie is the executor of Christensen’s will and the sole beneficiary of the will and his trust, both of which were established three days before his death.

FSLIC sources said she also is the beneficiary on a $10-million insurance policy on the life of the one-time Westminster dentist.

Nevada law prohibits McKinzie from exercising her powers as executor immediately. She sought appointment as a special administrator, claiming that an emergency existed and that she would pump money into the S&L; and act in place of Christensen, its only voting shareholder, according to papers she filed Jan. 20, the day before Christensen’s funeral.

Sources involved in the North America S&L; investigation said McKinzie, acting through her attorney, told California regulators that she wanted to apply the $10 million she would receive from Christensen’s life insurance policy to the S&L;’s capital base.

After the institution lost $9 million last year and saw its net worth plunge to a negative $1.5 million, the regulators demanded $6 million in added capital.

But the FSLIC put the S&L; into receivership and has passed its assets to a new, federally chartered North America Savings, and FSLIC lawyers argued that McKinzie’s need to act as a special administrator no longer is required because the S&L; she wanted to help no longer exists.