Swindler Is Given 4 Years for $5-Million Investment Hoax

A Van Nuys man who was vice president for investments of a firm that swindled about 500 investors out of more than $5 million was sentenced Friday to four years in prison.

David Wiksell, 48, was a key player in the scheme operated by Comstock Financial Services between August, 1984, and August, 1985, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. J. Timothy Browne said.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert T. Altman delivered the sentence on Wiksell’s January guilty plea to one count of selling unqualified securities.

Also charged in the scheme was the Universal City company’s chairman, Roy L. Comstock, 47. Comstock received a four-year sentence in August after pleading no contest to violating corporate securities laws.

Wiksell and Comstock told investors they could receive as much as a 30% return on their money, which the men said would be invested in Treasury bills, Browne said. Instead, the two diverted the money into a dozen bank accounts they controlled, he said.

Company Bankrupt

The Comstock company is now in bankruptcy. The money is apparently “spent and gone” on the living expenses of the two men and on the operating expenses of the Comstock company and a second company controlled by Wiksell, the prosecutor said.

Investors’ losses ranged from $5,000 to $200,000 each, Browne said.

The victims included the Rev. Jess Moody, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Van Nuys, who lost $40,000. Wiksell and Comstock were members of that church, Browne said.

Wiksell was convicted of the same charge in 1971 in his sale of stock in a soft-drink company, Browne said. Wiksell admitted selling the Bubble-Up stock through false statements about the company’s finances, he said.