TORRANCE : Ex-Bank President Gets 41 Months in Investment Scam
A former South Bay bank president who pleaded guilty to bilking dozens of friends and associates in a $2.8-million investment scam was sentenced Monday to 41 months in prison, the lightest term he could have received.
John B. (Whitey) O’Donnell, 58, former president of Republic Bank in Torrance, also was ordered by federal Judge Dickran Tevrizian to pay $2.8 million in restitution.
“I feel very, very badly about the events that brought me to this low point in my life,” O’Donnell told Tevrizian before sentencing.
O’Donnell, president of the bank from 1986 until his resignation in 1990, had pleaded guilty to setting up bogus investment pools in which he, posing as an agent of the prestigious Dreyfuss Management Inc., promised investors high returns in short periods. In what a prosecutor described as “a classic Ponzi scheme,” he used money from new investors to pay old ones.
His victims included several attorneys and other professionals, whose losses ranged from $5,000 to more than $1 million.
O’Donnell’s attorney, Richard Walton, said it is “problematic” whether the victims will recover more than a small part of their losses. O’Donnell has $800,000 equity in a home in Dallas, but no other assets.
