Executive Accused of Looting Pension Plan
A federal grand jury in Birmingham, Ala., has indicted a Mission Viejo businessman on embezzlement and mail fraud counts, charging that he used $700,000 in pension assets for personal and business expenses.
The indictment accuses Richard T. Price Jr. of diverting the money from a $1-million pension plan investment with First California Income Fund II, said the U.S. Labor Department’s Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration.
According to the indictment, the fund and a related company used a series of loans and loan repayment transactions to transfer $700,000 of the plan’s assets to Vulcan Metal Products Inc. in Birmingham and its parent company, IBS Holdings in Newport Beach.
Price was a director of Vulcan Metal Products and trustee of the company’s pension plan.
The federal labor agency released information this week on the indictment, which was handed down Nov. 8.
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