The Region - News from July 5, 1987

A federal indictment against a former San Fernando Valley bank president and civic leader accused of bilking elderly investors out of about $3 million was unsealed after the 74-year-old man’s arrest in West Germany. O. Monroe Marlowe was taken into custody Wednesday by Frankfurt police at the request of the U.S. attorney’s office and Postal Service inspectors in Los Angeles, Assistant U.S. Atty. David A. Katz said. Marlowe’s arrest ended a 10-month odyssey through seven nations during which he was almost captured twice, in Australia and Singapore, Katz said. He was apprehended when he went to the Frankfurt airport to meet his daughter, who was visiting from Oregon. A federal grand jury returned the 30-count indictment April 16, accusing Marlowe of inducing about 50 investors, most of them elderly couples, to put $5,000 to $105,000 into what turned out to be phony real estate loans. A Van Nuys resident for 26 years before he fled the country last September, Marlowe was founding president and chairman of Valley State Bank in Encino in 1978, remaining in those posts until 1981. He co-founded the First Citizens Bank of Sherman Oaks in 1986.