New Head of Family S&L; Has History of Tangled Finances : Despite Success of Takeover, Oliver Trigg Has Liens on His Home and Faces Creditor Suits, Mainly Because of Past Business Failures

Oliver A. Trigg Jr. was on the Hawaiian island of Maui on Aug. 4, savoring the greatest coup of his short career: his $1.24-million takeover of Family Savings & Loan, the nation’s fourth-largest black-owned thrift.

As Trigg celebrated his success, events 2,675 miles away in Los Angeles cast a shadow over his day in the sun. On that day, Trigg missed a federal court hearing with his biggest creditor, who plans to try to seize Trigg’s Family Savings stock unless the banker settles a 2-year-old claim for $180,000.

Clearly, Trigg is no ordinary banker. In interviews with friends, business associates and creditors, Trigg emerges as an enigma: a savvy and apparently wealthy entrepreneur who, despite his success, has six liens totaling $42,800 on his home and faces lawsuits from other creditors who say they are owed at least $62,000 more.

Most of the 36-year-old Trigg’s debts stem from what turned out to be two disastrous business ventures that he started in the early to mid-1980s. In a recent interview, Trigg attributed those failures to a youthful willingness “to try anything” and said he fully intends to pay off all his debts.

Now it appears that Trigg is bringing his entrepreneurial approach to Family Savings, the 39-year-old Crenshaw district thrift with a reputation as a conservative lender. For his $1.24 million, Trigg bought 51% of Family Savings.

During the last four months, an Inglewood apartment builder who is a friend and business associate of Trigg’s received two loans of $2.5 million or more from Family Savings. According to information obtained from public documents and in interviews, the loans were part of a complicated transaction that appears to have turned into a bonanza for Trigg.

Large Loan for S&L;

The transaction involved undeveloped land in Whittier that Trigg, apparently for no money down, bought for about $2.7 million last December from his friend Jack R. Urich, the millionaire chairman of an oil company named UCO Inc. Trigg sold the land six months later, Family Savings legal counsel Wayne C. Collett said, for about $5 million--nearly double what he paid--to another friend, developer Willie A. Powell. Powell financed the purchase in part with a $2.5-million loan from Family Savings, according to Collett.

It is a very large loan for a thrift the size of Family Savings. The $2.5 million represents a large proportion of Family Savings’ capital, the amount of money it has on hand to cover bad loans. On March 31, the most recent date for which official figures are available, Family Savings had $4.5 million in capital.

In the interview, Trigg insisted that he was not taking any unusual risks at Family Savings. Trigg said he takes more risks with his own money than with the thrift’s money and that, even with his personal investments, he has “calmed down.”

Thrift industry experts say that Family Savings’ financial condition has improved under Trigg’s direction. Since he became chairman of Family Savings in May of last year, its profits are up and he has reduced the S&L;’s number of bad loans by selling foreclosed properties. He has increased the number of loan officers to 13 from three and put them on commission to encourage them to make more loans.

Stays Close to Children

Friends interviewed in recent weeks say Trigg is bright, ambitious and obsessed with making money. “No one thinks in as many zeroes as he does,” said Channing Johnson, a Los Angeles lawyer who has known Trigg for more than 10 years.

Trigg said his real estate and stock investments, which he will not specify, have made him rich. His office at Family Savings is equipped with two personal computers that constantly monitor his hand-picked portfolio of 40 stocks. Trigg said the machines are programed to signal him with a beep when it is time for him to sell his stocks for a profit.

Yet friends say he takes time out for his three children. Associates say it is not unusual for Trigg to take his youngest, a 2-year-old daughter, to business meetings when a baby sitter is not available. And he was upset last month when a thrift association dinner kept him from a PTA meeting at his son’s school. Friends admire the young banker for making so much time available for his children, especially since the tragic death of his 31-year-old wife from breast cancer last Oct. 31, just two months after the disease was diagnosed.

He likes to do things his way. When Los Angeles theater owner Ernest Sims met Trigg for a business lunch, he was surprised to see the banker emerge from his jet black Ferrari dressed in jeans. The car’s license plate proclaims: FNCL WIZ. “He’s not your typical banker,” Sims said.

Trigg is a relative newcomer to banking. He got his start at Xerox, where he went to work as a financial analyst after getting a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and an MBA degree from Harvard University in 1975. Francis L. Price, an Orange County consultant who became close to Trigg while the two men worked at Xerox, said Trigg wanted to start his own company.

“We had many long talks about it,” Price recalled. “He said it is the only way to really make it in America.”

First Business Failed

Trigg got his chance in 1980, when James Roosevelt, a former congressman and son of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, agreed to help him start a company that distributed electronic components. Roosevelt put no money into the business, but introduced Trigg to Ronald Conrad, a prosperous Newport Beach accountant who agreed to lend Trigg $10,000.

Trigg Electronics failed but Trigg, undaunted, started a new company that distributed photocopying equipment and supplies.

He got start-up funds for the new company from several sources. He persuaded one of his suppliers, Pelikan, a West German photocopying equipment maker, to lend the business $75,000. Trigg’s father-in-law, LaMar E. Hardiman, refinanced his home in View Park, near Ladera Heights, to lend Trigg $135,000.

Hardiman said the new company, Trigg Enterprises, prospered initially and that yearly sales reached nearly $1 million in 1983. But Hardiman, a retired labor relations consultant, said the business stumbled in 1984 when his son-in-law apparently lost interest in it.

“That’s one thing about Oliver,” Hardiman said. “Once he starts something, he doesn’t like to stay and run it.”

Trigg Enterprises failed. But Trigg is philosophical about the collapse of his businesses. “That’s the life of an entrepreneur,” he said in the interview. He also said he thinks that he is better suited to the real estate business. Explaining the failure further, he said: “I got into the business for the wrong reasons. I did it to give my family jobs.”

Accountant Conrad and another creditor, the San Diego real estate information service Dataquick, sued and obtained liens totaling about $17,000 on Trigg’s property. (Dataquick became involved because Trigg was involved in real estate dealings and charged Dataquick’s fees to Trigg Enterprises.)

Says He’s “Cash Poor”

There are another $25,000 in liens against him and his defunct businesses for unpaid state and federal income taxes. On May 15 of this year, Dataquick sent a Los Angeles County marshal to Trigg’s home to seize his late wife’s 1982 Mercedes-Benz, but the attempt failed because the car was in the garage.

Trigg said the suits and the liens are the result of the fact that, despite his purchase of Family Savings for more than $1 million, he is “cash poor.”

In 1985, Trigg gave Pelikan, his biggest creditor, a third trust deed on his home for $87,676.55. Recently, he turned over his Family Savings stock certificates to Pelikan as security against the rest of the company’s claim, which Pelikan attorney William S. Harris said now comes to about $80,000, including $56,705.54 never paid for supplies and for interest. Harris said the stock will be sold by Nov. 2 if Trigg does not pay.

Even Trigg’s father-in-law felt the effects of Trigg’s business collapse. Hardiman said he received default notices twice last year, once in April and again in October, because Trigg missed the mortgage payments he had promised to make on Hardiman’s house. Hardiman says Trigg told him that the money was tied up in other investments.

“I was nervous, because I had never received a default notice before,” Hardiman said recently. “But my daughter (Trigg’s wife) always said, ‘Have faith in Oliver.’ So I did, and he did make the payments.”

After his businesses failed, Trigg looked for something new to do. And in mid-1985 he set his sights on Family Savings, a struggling thrift that had been for sale since the death in 1981 of its founder, M. Earl Grant.

Offer Was Rejected

In 1984, Grant’s widow nearly sold her shares to hotelier and real estate developer Severyn Ashkenaszy but the deal collapsed amid controversy that Family Savings would then be owned by a non-black. Flora Grant then sold an option to John T. McDonald, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, and to Collett, the Family Savings lawyer who, as a UCLA track star, won a silver medal in the 1972 Olympics. But McDonald died a few months later and Collett needed a partner to finance an acquisition. He teamed up with Trigg.

In 1985, Trigg and Collett offered to buy the thrift for cash and other assets worth $2.48 a share, or $744,000 for all of Family Savings’ outstanding 300,000 shares. The offer was rejected by federal regulators who said they were interested only in an all-cash offer.

Nevertheless, Flora Grant recalled recently, she was so impressed with Trigg that she asked him to join the thrift’s board of directors. In May, 1986, overwhelmed with the task of running the thrift, she asked Trigg to replace her as chairman.

It was a difficult time for Family Savings. The next month, the entire board was summoned to San Francisco to meet with officials of the Federal Home Loan Bank there. The thrift’s mounting loan losses concerned the regulators, who tightened the controls under which it operated. According to Lawrence Wilson, a Family Savings director, the regulators set a temporary $500,000 limit on any future loans the firm made. And nearly every loan package had to be sent to San Francisco for review.

Grant says she had confidence in her new chairman. “He seemed bright and seemed very successful,” she said, adding that Trigg told her that he did well with his stock market and real estate investments. She noticed his new, 1986 Ferrari and that he lived in Ladera Heights, a fashionable, mostly black neighborhood in the western part of Los Angeles. She says she never doubted that he was rich.

Substantial Investment

In fact, Trigg’s success in real estate was spotty, at best. He had received several default notices on houses he owns and had lost a duplex in Los Angeles in a 1984 trustee’s sale following a foreclosure. Creditors say that their exhaustive searches have turned up no investment property now owned by Trigg. “On the contrary,” said Darity Wesley, lawyer for Dataquick, “a distinct lack of property.”

However, property records and other public documents show Trigg to have made a substantial real estate investment last year. In March, 1986, Trigg and two partners had acquired from the big construction firm of Goldrich & Kest a partnership known as Hawthorne Terrace Limited Partners, which was planning an apartment project. The price was not disclosed. The project, located in Hawthorne, was part of the state-subsidized Century Freeway Housing Project.

Three months later, in June, 1986, Trigg bought out his partners--again for an undisclosed price--in a dispute “over the direction of the project,” according to Marvin Greer, one of the partners. Trigg sold the project to Powell in September, 1986, for $2.65 million.

It was an important deal for Trigg. According to documents on file with the state Department of Savings and Loan, he used part of the money from the sale to buy his stock in Family Savings. Greer would not discuss the nature of the dispute or what Trigg paid for his interest. But he said: “If Oliver got $2.65 million (from Powell), he did all right.”

Powell, who runs his W. A. Powell Inc. construction firm from an office in the Herbalife building in Inglewood, said in an interview that he is fond of Trigg. He said he brings his young daughter to play with Trigg’s daughter while he and Trigg discuss business.

Borrowed Heavily

Then this June, Powell said, he bought the undeveloped land in Whittier from Trigg and Trigg’s company, O. T. Investments, the name of which had been changed to CFTTMSM Inc. The deal apparently produced a profit of more than $2 million for Trigg, according to figures provided by Collett.

The Whittier property consists of 8.08 acres of undeveloped land in exclusive Friendly Hills Estates. According to property records and to Collett, Trigg’s former partner and now legal counsel to Family Savings, Powell borrowed about $2.7 million from a long-established loan firm, A&B; Loan Co. of Inglewood, and another $2.5 million from Family Savings to buy the land from Trigg.

But six weeks after Powell acquired the land, he changed his mind about the custom home development planned for Friendly Hills Estates. “I’m not that kind of developer,” Powell said in an interview. “I thought I wanted it, but I changed my mind.”

Powell had no problem finding a buyer. On July 29, Powell sold the land to Family Development Corp., a subsidiary of Family Savings.

According to Collett, Family Development Corp. paid about $5 million for the land. To acquire the land, Family Savings assumed the approximately $2.7-million A&B; Loan Co. obligation and canceled its $2.5-million loan to Powell.

Collett was aware that the price of the land had nearly doubled since last December, because he was involved with Trigg in the purchase of the land from Urich and with Family Savings when Family bought it from Powell. Collett, whose name appears on sales documents in both transactions, said he received no money in the deals.

Good Deal for S&L;

Collett, in fact, signed a deed of trust involved in Trigg’s purchase of the land as secretary of O. T. Investments but said recently in an interview that he was not secretary of the firm and merely signed documents as a favor to Trigg because “Oliver said he needed someone to sign with him.”

Collett acknowledged that “Oliver got a very good price on the land” but said the acquisition was a good deal for Family nonetheless. The thrift has an appraisal that says the land is worth $5 million, he said. Also, Family Savings has sold nine of the lots in Whittier and has received “at least what we paid for them,” Collett added.

Collett said that what made the deal even better was that, as part of it, the thrift was able to sell Powell $3 million worth of foreclosed property--a collection of undeveloped land and condominiums--that Family Savings had had trouble selling. Family Savings made it easy for Powell to buy the property: It loaned him $2.65 million.

Collett said that, in effect, Powell swapped the Whittier land for the foreclosed properties.

Powell, who also described the transaction as a swap, said he is happier with the property he has now. According to Collett, Powell got 25 condominiums in Fontana, 55 acres of land in Altadena and 1.15 acres in Los Angeles near Genesee and Fairfax avenues. Powell says he thinks that he can sell the condominiums “and make a little money on them.”

If the deal was great for Family Savings, it looks even better for Trigg, who said last week through his sister, Wanda Trigg, his administrative assistant, that he was too busy to answer questions about the transaction.

Wanted Property for Firm

Trigg had actually bought the Friendly Hills Estates land through his O. T. Investments company in December, 1986, from Tesoro Marine Ltd., a Bermuda company controlled by Urich, the Whittier millionaire, and his son, Jack Urich II. The Urichs had planned to build homes on the hilltop property but decided not to after the elder Urich’s wife was killed in a helicopter crash in 1984.

Collett said Trigg told him that he thought the land would be a good investment for Family Savings, but Collett added that the thrift was under regulatory review at the time and that Trigg reasoned that it probably would not have been allowed to make such a large purchase.

“Oliver was afraid the deal would get away and he wanted it for Family,” Collett said. So Trigg bought the land himself, Collett said, reasoning that once he bought control of the thrift--thereby increasing its capital by the $1.24 million purchase price--he would be able to sell the land to Family Savings.

It appears that Trigg did not have to pay cash for the Whittier property. Property records show that O. T. Investments granted Tesoro Marine a trust deed in the amount of $2,721,400, approximately what Collet said Trigg paid for the land.

But sometime last spring, Trigg apparently decided that he did not want the property. Trigg was “tired of holding the land,” Collett said. So he sold it, along with O. T. Investments, to Powell, Collett said.

Urich, an oil executive known for his shrewd real estate investments, referred a reporter’s questions to his lawyer, Max C. Garrick Jr. In an interview, Garrick said he did not know that Urich had sold the Whittier land to Trigg and that he thought the deal involved a joint venture between Powell and Urich to build custom homes. “I know Oliver introduced Powell to Jack, but I didn’t know Oliver was involved,” Garrick said. He said he did not know that Family Savings now owns the land.

Refinanced House

Trigg got to know Urich about eight years ago, after Trigg’s wife, LaNette Hardiman Trigg, went to work as a marketing executive at UCO, Urich’s oil company. Later, she also became a director of the company. After she died, the relationship between the two men is said to have deepened. “There was a camaraderie there,” said Garrick, who is also a UCO director.

Urich had helped Trigg in 1982 when he nearly lost his Ladera Heights home after defaulting on an $112,350 second trust deed. Trigg recalls that UCO refinanced the second trust deed interest-free instead of giving his wife a big raise that she had been expecting.

However, the refinancing of the home at that time was first done not by UCO but by Jaime Zurcher, a Mexican accountant later convicted and jailed in Mexico for his role in a check-kiting scheme that ran on both sides of the border from September, 1981, to May, 1984. In a check-kite, the balances of bank accounts are artificially inflated by coordinated exchange of non-sufficient funds checks between accounts. The kite that Zurcher was involved in resulted in the collapse of Mineral Bank of Nevada in Las Vegas and was allegedly masterminded by the late Joseph V. Agosto, a Las Vegas organized crime associate.

Agosto died before the grand jury acted in the case, but Urich, Zurcher and five others were indicted. Urich--who said he had lent money to Agosto but had no idea it was used illegally--was the only one of the six tried in this country to be acquitted. However, Urich and UCO are being sued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which seeks to recover $5 million that it says was lost in the swindle.

Trigg testified as a defense witness for Urich during Urich’s trial. Trigg says he does not know Zurcher or why Zurcher’s name appears on the trust deed. “The whole thing was handled at UCO,” Trigg said.

Gave Trust Deed to UCO

Garrick said he does not remember the circumstances of the loan. However, Garrick said it is likely that Zurcher, whom he described as a “wealthy Mexican, a millionaire,” acted for UCO. “LaNette was on our board. I wouldn’t be surprised if we decided to use a third party because these things can get pretty sensitive if the money isn’t paid back.”

For reasons that neither Trigg and Garrick say they can recall, Zurcher assigned the trust deed to UCO on Sept. 10, 1982, about nine weeks later. As far as is known, UCO still holds the trust deed.

Meanwhile, Family Savings--with the $1.24 million that Trigg used to pay for his stock added to the thrift’s capital base--now has an amount of money that regulators consider acceptable. Federal regulators have lifted the $500,000 loan limit and profits, though they have bounced around to some extent, have been higher.

In the quarter that ended in March, 1986, two months before Trigg became chairman of the thrift, the institution’s profit was $170,000. In the next quarter, ending in June, Family Savings’ profit was $233,000 and rose to $731,000 in the quarter ending in September, 1986. Since then, profits have fallen--to $433,000 in the fourth quarter of last year and to $287,000 for the most recent quarter for which figures are available, the one ending in March of 1987.

However, “It’s one of the few turnaround stories in the thrift industry,” said Salvatore Serrantino, a Santa Monica thrift industry analyst.

But Family Savings’ involvement in the development in Whittier seems to clash with the goals of the institution as stated by Trigg and other Family Savings officials.

Wilson, the Family Savings director who is a retired economist for United California Bank, a predecessor to First Interstate, said recently in an interview that he had never heard of Powell and that he knew nothing about loans to him. “We should make our funds available for home mortgages in the community,” Wilson said.

And indeed, Trigg said in the interview that his goal for Family Savings is to make more loans to businesses and home owners in the Los Angeles communities near the Crenshaw district. He said he recalls a paper he wrote for a social engineering course while he was an undergraduate at UCLA.

In the paper, he wrote that better-educated black men and women often leave their communities for places where there are better economic opportunities. And Family Savings, he said, can become an important force for good in the community by supporting local businesses, thus keeping promising young blacks in the Crenshaw district.

FAMILY SAVINGS AND LOAN ASSOCIATION

Located at 3683 Crenshaw Blvd. in Los Angeles, Family Savings & Loan Assn. was the fourth-largest black-owned thrift in the nation as of Dec. 31, 1986. At that time, it was also the 106th-largest thrift in California. It has one branch at the headquarters and one in Pasadena. (Data as of March 31) Assets: $142.2 million Deposits: $114.7 million Net worth: $4.5 million First quarter profit: $287,000