Brokers Get Prison for Cheating Charity

Two Orange County stockbrokers were sentenced Wednesday to 15 months in prison in a scam authorities said cost Guide Dogs for the Blind $2.9 million.

The San Rafael-based group never received assets bequeathed to it by a supporter who died in 1994. Instead, the man’s investment advisors, William Clark II and Gibrahn Verdult, used the money for high living, federal prosecutors said.

The two were also ordered to repay $2.9 million to the organization, prosecutors said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission accused the two men of cooking up a “fake will” and putting the bequeathed assets under their control. Prosecutors said Verdult used his ill-gotten gains to buy a $500,000 home and a $130,000 lot. He purchased sports cars and invested in a number of assets.

Clark, the records show, bought a $35,000 Corvette and hired a firm to invest the rest of the money.

In May, the two pleaded guilty in federal court in San Francisco to one count of money laundering.

They were hired by Leland Parker of Oakland shortly before he died at 88 in 1994. Two years earlier, Parker had directed that his estate go to Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Parker gave the two men stocks and bonds to help plan his estate, but they sold them a few days before his death instead of forwarding them to the charity, court records said.