Accountant Gets 11-Year Sentence for Loan Fraud : Scams: The former Pepperdine University instructor is ordered to pay almost $900,000 in restitution.

Former Pepperdine University accounting instructor Joseph V. Nash was sentenced in federal court Monday to 11 years in prison for defrauding four Southern California banking institutions of nearly $900,000.

In handing down the lengthy sentence, U.S. District Judge Laughlin E. Waters described Nash as an “engaging” figure who nonetheless “was not to be trusted.” The judge ordered Nash to pay $893,000 in restitution to the four financial institutions.

Nash began teaching at Pepperdine in 1982 but left last year when he learned he was going to be indicted. He claimed to have taught more than 5,000 students in 20 years in the classroom at Pepperdine, UCLA and other Southland universities.

As an accountant, his clients included Los Angeles financier Charles W. Knapp, who headed American Savings & Loan until 1984 and later formed a group of companies known as Trafalgar Holdings. Nash was the accountant for the Trafalgar companies.

“The ironic thing is that he got a longer sentence than (Charles) Keating did,” said Paul Caruso, Nash’s attorney. Keating recently received a 10-year state prison term in the failure of Lincoln Savings.

In the anonymous world of accounting, the 49-year-old Nash once stood out as a handsome and popular figure who combined his career as a teacher with a large accounting practice in Beverly Hills. Nash--who holds degrees in accounting, law and economics--was led from the courtroom in handcuffs, dressed in a standard-issue blue prison uniform. He had no comment on the sentence.

Nash was interviewed last year--before his indictment in the current case--in an unrelated federal investigation of Knapp’s connection to an unsecured $15-million loan several years ago from a savings and loan in Phoenix to Trafalgar Capital, court papers show.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Carolyn J. Kubota confirmed in an interview that Nash is also a target in the Trafalgar investigation. She declined further comment. Knapp remains under investigation.

Nash was found guilty in January on 15 counts of bank fraud and making false statements to federally insured financial institutions. His crimes included the submission of false tax returns to obtain $500,000 from Liberty National Bank of Huntington Beach. He eventually defaulted on the two loans.

Nash also obtained a $4.36-million mortgage loan from Great Western Savings by vastly overstating the rents on an office building he owned in Beverly Hills. The institution, now known as Great Western Bank, eventually foreclosed on the building.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Dorothy Shubin said at the sentencing Monday that Nash’s crimes were deliberate--motivated by “greed, pure and simple.”

As part of Nash’s punishment, Waters ordered him to pay more than $135,000 in restitution to Great Western and $459,000 to Liberty National. Two other lenders are to get an additional $300,000 in restitution.

Though Caruso attended Monday’s hearing and spoke on Nash’s behalf, Nash also acted as his own counsel during most of the proceeding. Caruso conceded that the strategy did not work, as Nash spent much of the time rehashing facts that had been argued during the trial.

“The more Joe talked,” said Caruso, a veteran criminal attorney, “the deeper the hole he dug for himself.”