Ex-LaRouche Adviser Guilty in Funds Fraud

A former consultant to Lyndon LaRouche was found guilty today of charges he conspired to cover up millions of dollars in alleged credit card and loan fraud by the political extremist’s 1984 presidential campaign.

A federal jury deliberated for about three hours over two days before returning the verdict in the case against Roy Frankhauser.

Frankhauser, 48, of Reading, Pa., faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for conspiring to obstruct justice. He is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party, but those memberships were not discussed in the presence of the jury.

In his summation, Assistant U.S. Atty. John Markham portrayed Frankhauser as the architect and director of a plot to protect LaRouche and his inner circle from a Boston grand jury investigation of alleged credit card and loan fraud.

But defense attorney Owen Walker characterized Frankhauser as a minor figure in the “crazy” LaRouche organization whose advice to settle with fraud victims was ignored. Walker contended LaRouche directed a cover-up.

LaRouche to Be Tried

LaRouche, five of his political organizations and five aides are scheduled to be tried on similar charges beginning Monday.

LaRouche, a conspiracy theorist who believes, among other things, that Queen Elizabeth II is a drug trafficker and that he is the target of assassins and government persecution, is seeking the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, his fourth run for the White House.

Frankhauser was a LaRouche security consultant for about seven years until he left the organization in late 1986 when the Boston grand jury returned the first indictment in the case.

It alleged LaRouche organizations and supporters made fraudulent charges to credit card accounts of prior donors to LaRouche causes. The fraud allegedly was to pay for LaRouche’s 1984 campaign and for the move of his national headquarters from New York City to Leesburg, Va.