THOUSAND OAKS : Jurors Are Still Out in Bank Fraud Trial

Jurors in U. S. District Court in Los Angeles ended their eighth day of deliberations Monday without a verdict in the trial of two Thousand Oaks men accused of misusing their own bank’s money to defraud banking regulators.

Phillip L. Chase and Olen B. Phillips are fighting charges that they defrauded banking regulators in a bid to keep their failing United Community Bank afloat and millions in investments intact.

Assistant U. S. Atty. Brent Whittlesey has argued that Chase, 51, and Phillips, 53, lent bank funds to themselves through “straw borrowers” and used the money to buy shares of stock in the bank. The move was meant to make it seem as though the bank was worth enough to keep state regulators at bay.

Chase testified that he did not know it was illegal when he and Phillips lent $300,000 in bank funds to customers and borrowed back that amount to buy bank stock. Phillips did not testify.

On Thursday, jurors announced a deadlocked 11-1 verdict. But the jury resumed deliberating after Judge William D. Keller read a standard instruction urging them to try to work beyond their impasse and reach a unanimous verdict.

Deliberations were suspended Monday morning while Whittlesey argued that one juror could be dismissed because he may have been involved in a major bank fraud in the 1980s.

FBI Agent Ted Bowler, assisting Whittlesey in preparing exit questionnaires for the jury in case of a mistrial, had recognized the juror’s name last week. It was the name of a man the FBI had investigated in a 1984 fraud scheme that led to the collapse of Hacienda Federal Savings & Loan Assn. of Oxnard--the first of Ventura County’s banks to fail in the 1980s, Whittlesey said.

Richard Marmaro, Chase’s attorney, argued against excluding the juror and accused Whittlesey of trying to rid the panel of members the prosecution did not like. But after further research, court officials determined that the fraud suspect was young enough to be the juror’s son, and Keller denied the request to exclude the juror. The jury was then told to resume deliberations this morning.