Keating Asks for Service Work Instead of Prison

LOS ANGELES â€”  Charles H. Keating Jr. urged a Superior Court judge Tuesday to sentence him to community service rather than the maximum 10-year prison sentence he faces for his conviction last fall on state securities fraud charges.

The former owner of Lincoln Savings & Loan said he would welcome the opportunity to expand on “my lifelong commitment to community service,� according to a private probation report filed with Judge Lance A. Ito for Keating’s April 10 sentencing.

“I am willing to roll up my sleeves and get to work to help solve community needs here or elsewhere,� Keating said.

Keating denied doing anything illegal but said nevertheless that “doesn’t reduce the sense of responsibility I feel to the bondholders who invested in my institution.�

Thousands of small investors, mostly elderly Lincoln customers, lost $285 million after Lincoln and its parent company, American Continental Corp., collapsed three years ago. The Irvine thrift is the nation’s biggest S&L; failure, costing taxpayers $2.6 billion.

The investors, who are trying their civil cases against Keating and his professional advisers in a federal court in Tucson, contend that they were duped into buying risky American Continental bonds.

On Dec. 4, his 68th birthday, Keating was convicted on 17 counts of state securities fraud and faces a maximum term of 10 years in prison. He has also been indicted in federal courts in Los Angeles and Phoenix on fraud, conspiracy and racketeering charges that carry a combined maximum prison term of more than 500 years.

“If I were ever put in a position where my experience and abilities to earn money were able to be exercised and there were still unrecovered moneys due the bondholders, I would be pleased--indeed gratified--to devote as much of the remainder of my life as necessary to make them whole,� Keating said in the probation report. Defendants are allowed to submit such reports, which then become public, to counterbalance or even complement county probation reports.

The three-inch-thick report, together with a Keating family scrapbook, is aimed at providing Ito with favorable information about Keating that didn’t come out during his trial last fall. Keating’s lawyers hope to convince Ito to impose less than the maximum 10-year prison term sought by prosecutors.

The county is expected to release its probation report, which contains a sentencing recommendation, by Tuesday.

Sheila Balkan, a Santa Monica criminologist hired by Keating to compile the private probation report, wrote that Keating would be welcomed at Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity/California (VOSH/Cal), an organization that provides supplies and medicine for vision care services in developing countries.

The report stated that VOSH/Cal’s chief executive, Dr. David Krasnow, thinks Keating would be a “great benefit� to the group in fund raising and with “logistical organization� of donated materials and supplies.