Ex-Burbank Official Charged With Fraud

BURBANK — A former Burbank city councilman was charged with bank fraud by the U.S. attorney’s office Thursday in connection with the attempted purchase of a Bell Canyon house.

James Richman, 63, faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 if convicted.

Richman is accused of defrauding Western Federal Savings and Loan in Tarzana six years ago, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Richman, who served on the Burbank City Council from 1977 to 1981, is accused of submitting false tax returns to the bank and lying about the source of the money he intended to use for down payment on a Hackamore Lane house in 1991, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

Richman gave the false information to obtain a bank loan for more than half a million dollars, Mrozek said. Richman’s attorney, David Houchin, declined to comment on the charges, saying only that his client was aware they had been filed.

“We allege that [Richman] set up the transaction in such a way so that he could get more than 100% financing and have money left over,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Harriet Rolnick.

The arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 29.

Richman has had a colorful history in Burbank, both during his tenure on the council and after. He survived an attempted recall drive in 1978, led by political opponents who claimed Richman was aggressively combative, abrasive and ineffective.

In 1985, he announced that he was writing a book on the city’s politics and his own career to be titled, “The Political Sewer; Beneath Beautiful Downtown Burbank.”

In the spring of 1985, Richman was ordered by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to pay $10,000 to a political foe who the judge ruled had been libeled in a newspaper article written by Richman. The judge held that Richman had implied his foe was a homosexual in a column that appeared in the now-defunct weekly Burbank Scene, which, in 1979, invited city council members to write columns on a rotating basis.

Later that same year, Richman was ordered to pay a libel judgment of $5,000 to an area concert promotion firm as part of a $4.6-million judgment against the city of Burbank for barring promoters from staging rock concerts at the city’s Starlight Amphitheatre.

Richman had led opposition to the concerts by arguing they would attract crowds of “homosexuals and dopers.”