OTHER NEWS - March 9, 1995

Former First Pension President Sentenced: Valerie Jensen was ordered to spend four years and three months in prison for her part in an investment scam and to repay $74 million to thousands of elderly clients who were cheated out of pension money. As the former president of First Pension Corp. in Irvine, in which investors lost more than $136 million, Jensen could have faced 10 years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge John G. Davies in Los Angeles reduced the sentence based on Jensen’s extensive cooperation with the U.S. attorney’s office in its investigation of the company. Jensen, Robert E. Lindley and William E. Cooper admitted in August that they led clients into investing in nonexistent mortgages and used money from new investors to make payments to earlier ones. Cooper, the founder of First Pension, was sentenced last month to 10 years in federal prison. Lindley, the fund’s chief financial officer, was given a nine-year term. Jensen will not begin serving her sentence until May 30 so she can continue to assist investigators seeking to recover lost funds.