Dan Patrick radio deal financed by S&L swindler

AUSTIN — Republican Dan Patrick, the leading GOP contender for lieutenant governor, took over a Houston radio station years ago with funds borrowed from a businessman later convicted of looting tens of millions of dollars from a Louisiana savings and loan.

Patrick said he had no knowledge of the financial schemes of his backer, W. Harold Sellers of Houston, when he persuaded Sellers to become the main investor in the purchase of a local radio station. Its success proved crucial to Patrick’s rebound from bankruptcy after his chain of sports bars failed.

Seeking to recover some of the money bilked from thrifts in the 1980s savings and loan crisis, two federal entities eventually sued Sellers. Among other things, they alleged that he used laundered S&L loan money to finance Patrick’s plan to buy what is now KSEV-AM in late 1988. Earlier that year, Sellers fraudulently obtained $86 million in loans from the New Orleans thrift, federal officials charged.

“At least $658,653 was used by Sellers to acquire 62 percent of the stock and finance operations in Sunbelt Broadcasting Co. Inc., which at the time owned one radio station (KSEV) in the Houston area,” the FDIC and federal Resolution Trust Corp. said in their lawsuit.

More at http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/state-politics/20140502-dan-patrick-radio-deal-financed-by-sl-swindler.ece .

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