Trigg Turns Over Control of S&L; Amid U.S. Probe

The former chairman of Family Savings & Loan, the nation’s second-largest black-owned thrift, has relinquished control of his Family Savings stock amid a federal probe into fraud at the institution.

Oliver A. Trigg Jr., the 37-year-old real estate investor who bought control of Family Savings last July, turned control of his shares over to a voting trust under pressure from federal thrift regulators, it was learned Wednesday. He gave up his posts as chairman and chief executive of the S&L; last month.

Family Savings is the subject of an FBI investigation into unspecified allegations of fraud at the thrift. FBI spokesman Fred Regan confirmed the existence of the 3-month-old probe Wednesday.

Trigg, an unconventional banker who preferred blue jeans to business suits and drove a black Ferrari, came under the scrutiny of federal and state thrift regulators last October after a Times story outlined a series of unusual multimillion-dollar transactions involving Trigg and Family Savings.

Trigg acquired 51% of the company last July for $1.24 million and immediately took over as chief executive of the 40-year-old thrift in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. Trigg had served as Family Saving’s chairman since May, 1986.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Trigg’s lawyer, Arthur H. Barens, refused to discuss the details of the voting trust arrangement for Trigg’s stock. Trigg could not be reached.

A source close to the investigation identified the trustee as Reginald H. Alleyne Jr., a UCLA law professor.

Alleyne said in a telephone interview that he had agreed to serve as trustee but had not yet received formal notification of his selection from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.

Federal and state regulators are known to be interested in a large and complex deal outlined in the Times story last fall that involved eight acres of undeveloped land in Whittier’s exclusive Friendly Hills Estates neighborhood.

O. T. Investments, a company formed by Trigg, bought the land in December, 1986, from Whittier oil millionaire Jack R. Urich for $2.7 million. Six months later, Trigg sold the land to a friend, Inglewood developer Willie A. Powell, for about $5 million. Soon thereafter, Family Savings bought the land for $5.2 million.

Although the land deals appear to have reaped a bonanza for Trigg, in an interview last year with the Los Angeles Sentinel, a black weekly newspaper, he denied making any money on the transactions.

Investigators from the Federal Home Loan Bank in San Francisco have appraised the Whittier land three times. Each appraisal has been for less than the $5.2 million that Family Savings paid for it. In an earlier interview, Barens said the highest appraisal was in the “mid-$4 million” range.

Family Savings is in the process of selling the Whittier land. If it gets less than $5.2 million for the land, Trigg must pay Family Savings the difference, a source close to the investigation said.