Glen Ivy Founder Will Step Down in Wake of Probe : Investigation: Two directors likely to temporarily control nation’s biggest time-share firm.

Glen Ivy Financial Group’s founder and chief executive will step down by the end of this week as part of an agreement with regulators who are investigating the nation’s largest time-share operator, sources said Wednesday.

Ralph Mann, who started Glen Ivy in 1975 with a single RV park in Corona, is expected to resign in the next several days, sources said. He will remain a Glen Ivy employee and continue to serve as a company director.

Mann could return as chief executive sometime in the future, depending on the outcome of an ongoing criminal investigation of the Corona-based company. The onetime bricklayer has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

Glen Ivy, which has 60,000 customers and 24 resorts in eight states, was raided by more than 100 state and local authorities last week in conjunction with a county grand jury investigation of the company’s sales practices.

Glen Ivy and its executives have not been charged with any wrongdoing, and company officials previously have strongly denied allegations of overselling time-shares. Generally, a time-share company can only sell 51 weeks per condominium unit, but some employees claim Glen Ivy exceeded that limit.

Michael Tennenbaum, a Bear Stearns & Co. investment banker and Glen Ivy director, and Jeffrey Chambers, a Palo Alto venture capitalist and company director, are expected to assume temporary control of the firm, sources said.

Tennenbaum, Chambers and weight-loss maven Jenny Craig were part of a consortium of companies and individuals that invested $15 million in Glen Ivy last summer after the Corona company had some run-ins with state regulators.

Former and current Glen Ivy managers have told investigators that Glen Ivy oversold several resorts, including those in Hawaii, Laguna Beach, Palm Springs and Lake Havasu City, Ariz., in the late 1980s.

Peter Guimmo, president of a Glen Ivy subsidiary under investigation, and Brian Wahlstrom, Glen Ivy’s computer systems manager, will take a leave of absence pending the outcome of the grand jury investigation, company sources said.

Regulators from offices of the Riverside County district attorney and California attorney general and state Department of Real Estate raided the homes of both Guimmo and Wahlstrom last week in search of evidence for their investigation.

Neither man has been available for comment.

Two years ago, a federal grand jury investigated allegations by a company consultant that Guimmo, then Glen Ivy’s chief financial officer, had used a photographer’s light table to trace over customer signatures. The investigation was dropped after 11 months and no charges were filed.

Wahlstrom, of Moreno Valley, was in charge of Glen Ivy’s massive computer system.

Several top executives and mid-level managers have claimed in interviews with The Times that Glen Ivy used a complex computer system to prevent regulators and most employees from discovering that some resorts were allegedly oversold.

Glen Ivy officials have denied the existence of any such computer program.

Close to 20 former and current Glen Ivy employees have been subpoenaed to appear before the county grand jury, company sources said.

Allan H. Stokke, a Santa Ana attorney representing many of those employees, has advised those employees to refuse to answer questions and assert their Fifth Amendment rights protecting them against self-incrimination.

“We have advised them to take the Fifth simply because we are unaware of all of the facts involved,” Glen Ivy spokesman Alexander Auerbach said early this week. “There has been no way for us or them to prepare on such short notice.”