Sister Says She Didn’t Know of Recluse’s Riches

The 89-year-old sister of a reclusive, penny-pinching multimillionaire from Long Beach testified in federal court recently that she never knew him to have a checking account or even use credit cards.

“He was a very thrifty person. He held onto his money,” Nancy Bainbridge said, referring with a chuckle to her late brother, Everett Reiten, who died last year in a Wisconsin nursing home at age 92.

“He gave me $50 for my birthday and $50 for Christmas--no large amount. I didn’t want large amounts,” said Bainbridge, who was flown to Los Angeles to testify in the U.S. District Court trial of Willard R. Walls Jr., a former Long Beach stockbroker accused of diverting more than $400,000 from Reiten’s stock accounts over about three years. Walls faces varied securities and mail fraud charges.

Bainbridge said she had no idea that her brother was a millionaire until his wealth was mentioned last year on a network TV show about unclaimed fortunes.

“Ever was a private person,” she said. “He minded his own business.”

In recent years, Reiten’s stocks soared in worth to as much as $16 million, but he lived the life of an impoverished recluse, keeping his wealth a secret and spending as little as possible.

Reiten moved to Long Beach from the Midwest in 1930 but did not return to Wisconsin for a visit until 1953, Bainbridge said, adding that he returned to his hometown regularly after that.

The prosecution contends that Walls--Reiten’s stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith--took advantage of Reiten’s eccentric habits by having Reiten’s account statements mailed to Walls’ Huntington Beach residence, forging Reiten’s signature to various documents, then siphoning money from Reiten’s accounts.

Walls has acknowledged moving some of Reiten’s money into accounts held in Walls’ name and his wife’s name. But Walls said he made the transfers because he did not know where Reiten was and wanted to protect the money from seizure by the Internal Revenue Service, which was owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes.

When Merrill Lynch discovered that Reiten’s account statements were being mailed to Walls’ Huntington Beach residence, they began an investigation, fired Walls and made abortive attempts to find Reiten.

Reiten’s money was placed in a conservatorship with the Orange County Public Guardian’s Office, and Reiten was declared a missing person. He died in August, 1989.

In December, the guardian’s office dissolved the conservatorship and transferred the estate to Bainbridge and a nephew, the prospective heirs. The estate is in probate.