The State - News from Feb. 9, 1988

Fusion Energy Foundation, a group affiliated with political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., has been charged with defrauding an elderly Laguna Hills widow suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease out of a $100,000 stock portfolio. In a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court, representatives of the foundation, which advocates use of nuclear power, are accused of using a “boiler-room” telephone solicitation technique to defraud Flora Whitton of her entire savings. The lawsuit alleges that after undertaking the telephone fund-raising solicitation, members of the foundation flew to Orange County from Washington to escort Whitton to her bank, where they helped her remove the stock certificates from her safe deposit box and sign them over to their foundation. The lawsuit says Whitton had no contact with the LaRouche group before her donation and “she is not interested nor ever has been interested in the battle between nuclear (and) conventional energy.”