Judge Sets Tougher Restrictions to Monitor Keating

A Superior Court judge Monday ordered indicted Arizona businessman Charles H. Keating Jr. to begin a stricter weekly check-in schedule after prosecutors complained that the former thrift executive couldn’t be found over the Thanksgiving Day weekend.

Judge Lance A. Ito ordered Keating and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to choose a specific day and time for weekly check-ins by telephone.

“That way, you don’t have to play phone tag with each other,” Ito said.

The 66-year-old Keating is free on $500,000 bail while he awaits trial on 46 counts of state securities fraud. He has been required to check in weekly with authorities, but previously was not required to adhere to a specific time and day.

Keating, the former owner of the defunct Lincoln Savings & Loan, was two days late over the Thanksgiving Day weekend in contacting prosecutors.

Deputy Dist. Atty. William Hodgman said Keating had given prosecutors a telephone number and a time to call him on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but no one answered when a district attorney’s investigator called.

The investigator also called one of Keating’s lawyers in Chicago, and the lawyer tried reaching Keating. But Keating had changed his unlisted telephone number to another unlisted number, and the lawyer didn’t get through until Sunday. Keating called the investigator on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Keating’s lead lawyer, Stephen C. Neal, called the prosecutor’s action a “trumped-up issue,” but Hodgman said Keating simply wasn’t where he said he would be. “Mr. Keating’s got to play by the same rules as any other defendant,” Hodgman said.

Keating appeared at the hearing, but Neal would not allow him to respond to reporters’ questions.

Ito also scheduled a Jan. 11 hearing on defense motions to dismiss 26 counts because Keating’s lawyers say the counts fail to allege a crime or are vague. Those counts are the new and expanded versions of 22 counts that Ito had set aside on similar grounds Nov. 9. He allowed prosecutors to amend the indictment.

Defense attorneys also contend that prosecutors can’t amend accusations in a grand jury indictment without approval from the grand jury. State law allows prosecutors to make minor changes in indictments but requires that major changes be approved by the same or a new grand jury.

The remaining 20 counts also are being attacked by the defense on grounds that the grand jury returned the indictment without reasonable or probable cause. Ito will set a hearing on that issue later.

Keating, who is the former chairman of American Continental Corp., is accused with three other former executives of misleading small investors who bought some $200 million in the company’s bonds at the Southern California branches of its primary subsidiary, Lincoln Savings, of Irvine. The bonds have become worthless since the company filed for bankruptcy protection in April, 1989.