O.C. Man Pleads Guilty for Role in Thrift Fraud

Brian W. Fink of Orange, accused of helping Newport Beach businessman Michael E. Parker defraud Columbia Savings & Loan Assn., pleaded guilty Monday to two felonies for his role in the multimillion-dollar equipment-leasing scheme.

Fink admitted receiving $1,050,000 from the fraud, which prosecutors said netted at least $11 million between 1983 and 1987 in one of the largest cases of thrift fraud in Southern California.

Fink agreed to plead guilty in return for prosecutors’ filing no more charges against him. Sentencing is set for Nov. 4 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The two felonies--conspiracy and tax evasion--carry maximum penalties of five years in jail and a $250,000 fine each.

Prosecutors said Fink, 42, didn’t declare the $1 million on his tax returns. They contend that Parker paid him the money in return for preparing “bogus paperwork” used to defraud Columbia.

Fink waived indictment and was charged in an information, which may only be filed with a defendant’s consent; nor was he arrested in February with others indicted in the case, indicating he is cooperating with prosecutors. Assistant U.S. Atty. James R. Asperger declined to comment Monday on whether Fink would testify for the government at Parker’s trial, which begins a month before Fink’s sentencing.

Neither Fink nor his lawyer returned phone calls late Monday afternoon.

Parker was arrested Feb. 27 at his $1.4-million home in Newport Beach’s posh Big Canyon neighborhood after a federal grand jury indicted him on 46 counts of racketeering, money laundering, paying and receiving kickbacks, bank and tax fraud, and tax evasion.

Also indicted with the flamboyant Parker, 43, was Jeffrey S. Worthy, 33, a Downey man who was Columbia’s director of financial planning. Parker paid Worthy $1.5 million to look the other way while Parker defrauded the Beverly Hills thrift, federal prosecutors allege.

Parker and Worthy are out on bail awaiting trial Sept. 3. Both men have previously denied any wrongdoing.

The indictments allege that Parker used one of his companies, Parker North American Corp., to bring Columbia in as an investor in leasing equipment, such as computers, to banks and thrifts.

During the mid-1980s Columbia invested $166 million in such leases, but at least $11 million of those leases were either phony or inflated, the indictment alleges. Fink was a vice president at Parker North American, which is now in bankruptcy.

Some of the money was used to finance Parker’s gambling trips to Lake Tahoe, according to a bankruptcy examiner’s report.

The federal Office of Thrift Supervision has said it will also seek $25 million in restitution from Parker, Worthy and Fink.

Another company founded by Parker, Costa Mesa-based Parker Automotive Corp., has also encountered recent trouble. Parker earlier this year signed over control of his majority of the stock in the publicly held manufacturer of engine-cleaning equipment to a Texan who agreed to bail out the troubled company. Later the Texan, Connie C. Armstrong Jr., was accused in a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco of defrauding Federal Express of millions of dollars.

Parker said last month that he would try to regain control of the money-losing company. The federal government and creditors of Parker North American have a keen interest in that stock, since they said it could be used to repay creditors and those parties victimized in the alleged equipment-leasing scheme.

Fink, in fact, turned over his stock in Parker Automotive to the government as part of his plea agreement, said Asperger, the federal prosecutor. The stock was worth $450,000 “a few months ago,” he said, “but it’s probably worth quite a bit less now with the drop in the stock price.”