ORANGE COUNTY

SEC Seeks to Ban First Pension Fraud Figure: The Securities and Exchange Commission filed administrative charges seeking to ban William E. Cooper “from the securities industry for life,” an SEC official in Los Angeles said. The charges against Cooper involve fraud in the sale of 239 limited partnerships in real estate deals by his Vestcorp Securities Inc. Cooper and other Vestcorp executives misled investors, the SEC said, by failing to tell them critical real estate documents didn’t exist for the partnerships and that funds paid to the partnerships had been diverted from another firm Cooper owned, Irvine-based First Pension Corp. Cooper was sentenced to 10 years in prison in February and ordered to repay $73 million in a related federal criminal case.