Marcos’ Ex-Mistress Gets 8 Years in $18-Million Fraud

Dovie Beams de Villagran, a former B-movie actress and ex-mistress of deposed Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison for defrauding several banks out of $18 million in real estate loans.

Weeping and clinging to a lectern for support, De Villagran was ordered to serve her sentence at a federal prison in Lexington, Ky., where medical facilities are available to treat her health problems, which she says include AIDS.

De Villagran, 55, and her husband, Sergio, 54, were convicted in Los Angeles federal court of using false financial statements and income tax returns to obtain millions of dollars worth of loans from a dozen local banks to finance their vast Southern California real estate holdings--including a lavish mansion in Pasadena.

Federal prosecutors said that the defendants had little actual income to support the loans, and that banks who lent them money lost up to $7 million. An additional $6 million in assets has been concealed from creditors since the couple declared bankruptcy last year, claiming $24 million in debts, prosecutors said.

About two dozen properties the couple owned in Beverly Hills and Pasadena, including the mansion, are being sold to pay creditors.

Sergio Villagran was sentenced to five years in prison for his guilty plea to nine counts of the 42-count indictment.

Villagran said he relied on his wife’s business expertise to handle their financial affairs. But De Villagran’s attorney, Richard Sherman, claims the former actress was so mentally impaired from an arterial blockage and the AIDS virus that she could not be held responsible.

Moving Friday for a new trial, Sherman presented evidence that a physician who treated De Villagran nearly 30 years ago concluded she was a “borderline psychotic.”

But U.S. District Judge Pamela Ann Rymer, who refused to allow De Villagran to present an insanity defense, said there is “no substantial evidence to this day of a serious psychiatric problem.”

“Although the motivation is something only those two (the couple) will ever know, it appears to have been one of greed and a great deal of personal pride, and inability to face the financial reality that one has to earn by honest endeavor the resources necessary to support a mansion of that sort,” Rymer said. “A fraud for greed is still a fraud.”

De Villagran began sobbing when her husband’s attorney, Anna Ho, said Villagran has lost his family’s support as a result of the criminal indictment.

“This day, they will not even talk to him. He has not only suffered extensively, he has lost his own family,” Ho said.

Rymer called a brief recess while a nurse examined the former actress, who appeared to be near fainting.

De Villagran made several low-budget movies in the Philippines and has claimed to be the mistress of Marcos, who has not denied it. Her lawyer claims his client has tested positive for the AIDS virus and has developed AIDS-related complex, thought to be a precursor to the deadly disease.

But federal prosecutors presented a declaration Friday indicating that an AIDS test administered this month turned up negative.

In a sentencing memorandum to the court, the prosecutors--Assistant U.S. Attys. Ron Nessim and Julie Fox Blackshaw--accused De Villagran of “manipulating” her physical condition.

“In fact, while government counsel often saw her stagger for support in the courtroom, counsel saw her on Nov. 6, 1987, walking briskly, including running across a street, outside of the courtroom,” the prosecutors wrote.

Rymer declined to order the couple to pay restitution to the banks involved, some of which have subsequently failed, saying that issue should be resolved by the bankruptcy court.

The judge said the scheme involved “a very great number of victims. They were financial institutions. The institutions were not quite so helpless as the proverbial little old lady in tennis shoes,” Rymer said. “But the system of lending, the relationship between a bank and its customers, to a great extent depends on the value of one’s word about one’s worth.”