ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Citron Gave Broker Many Calls but Few Commissions : Fund: Dean Witter’s Albert De Spirito talked often with treasurer but seldom made sales to him. The two might have been chatting, not dealing.

Merrill Lynch stockbroker Michael G. Stamenson led the way in peddling high-risk investments to former Orange Country Treasurer Robert L. Citron, but he wasn’t the only securities salesman who developed close ties to Citron.

In fact, in testimony this week before a special state Senate committee investigating the Orange County debacle, Stamenson claimed that a little-known Dean Witter Reynolds salesman named Albert J. De Spirito was the first broker Citron called every day.

Even if De Spirito was first in line among the brokers who courted Citron, however, that standing doesn’t appear to have translated into substantial profit for either him or his firm.

In interviews with securities industry sources, attorneys involved in the Orange County crisis and major investors in the collapsed county fund, a picture of De Spirito emerges as a capable, yet unspectacular broker whose frequent chats with Citron yielded little business. He appears to have been no more than a bit player in Citron’s dealings, notwithstanding the speculation triggered after his name emerged twice during Tuesday’s hearing in Sacramento.

More than anything else, the early morning conversations may simply have been opportunities for Citron to chat with a personal friend while, at the same time, gathering a little intelligence on developments in the investment markets.

*

Citron’s attorney, David Wiechert, said the roles played by Stamenson, a prominent broker for Merrill Lynch, and De Spirito, who has been in the securities business nearly 30 years, were vastly different.

“Mr. Stamenson was pushing (financial) product on Mr. Citron on a regular basis; Mr. De Spirito sold very little product to Mr. Citron,” Wiechert said. “I don’t think there’s anything comparable between Mr. Stamenson’s role and Mr. De Spirito’s.”

De Spirito “was an ordinary guy,” added one investment specialist who worked with him more than 10 years ago and who asked not to be identified. “If you’re asking me whether this is a guy who was a showstopper in our business, I would say no. But he was a competent professional.”

To be sure, De Spirito has been successful enough to live well. He and his wife have resided since 1982 in a 4,300-square-foot, two-story house with a brick driveway in San Marino. They both drive Jaguars; last year, De Spirito bought the second Jaguar, a used 1990 convertible with vanity license plates bearing his initials.

De Spirito, who turns 56 later this month, grew up in New York and graduated from a Brooklyn high school in 1956. He took day and night school courses in engineering and business at Brooklyn College and Pace College, also in New York, through the early 1960s, but never earned a degree.

He got his start in the stock brokerage business in 1967 with Salomon Bros., and stayed with the firm for nine years. Eventually he moved from New Jersey to Southern California, and worked for a string of securities firms in Los Angeles, including CS First Boston, where he was a principal, and the once high-flying Drexel Burnham Lambert, which was destroyed by the Michael Milken scandal. He also briefly was chief operating officer of a small firm called Pacnet Securities, which went out of business in the mid-1980s.

In January, 1990, De Spirito rejoined Wall Street giant Dean Witter Reynolds, a firm he previously worked for in the mid-1980s, and he has been there even since.

According to a database maintained by the National Assn. of Securities Dealers and state securities regulators, De Spirito has no record of disciplinary problems as a broker. In the regulators’ public records, the only blemish that showed up was that De Spirito twice failed securities industry professional exams, in 1989 and 1990, before passing on his third try.

De Spirito and Dean Witter officials have declined to comment on the broker’s relationship with Citron, whose risky investments last month plunged the affluent county into bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch also declined comment.

*

One source closely involved in the bankruptcy case said he believed Stamenson, in the Senate hearing, purposely inflated De Spirito’s significance as a financial adviser to Citron in an attempt to deflect attention from his own prominent role in the fiscal crisis.

“Look at the figures,” the source said. “If (De Spirito) was that much of a valuable adviser, and I was his boss, I would want to know why Merrill Lynch was selling 90% of the securities to the county. I’d sure think De Spirito wasn’t a very effective salesman.”

Gary Granville, Orange County’s clerk-recorder and an old friend of Citron’s, said the former treasurer had spoken to him about De Spirito over the years and introduced him to the broker at one point. His impression, Granville said, was that the two men were friends.

“I don’t know that De Spirito actually advised Bob in any formal way,” Granville said. “I think it would be more like if you and I went to lunch and I said, ‘Don’t walk down any dark alleys.’ It was more like that, just kind of casual advice.”

While many of California’s county treasurers who were asked about De Spirito this week said they had not heard of him, San Bernardino County’s Tom O’Donnell said De Spirito was well regarded among the municipal finance officials who he called on in his regular sales rounds and that he was one of the six or seven brokers used by his office. But he also said De Spirito would rank on the bottom end of brokers who generated income from San Bernardino County.

“We have done business with Al,” said O’Donnell. “Al is just another broker and as far as I’m concerned he’s a fine man.

“Al has never recommended any kind of investment strategy to us,” said O’Donnell. “All we would do is talk about what the market is doing.”

Times staff writer J. Michael Kennedy also contributed to this report.