Charles Keating, disgraced financier and savings-and-loan collapse villain, is dead at age 90

Arizona Republic/Twitter

Charles Keating, disgraced financier and savings-and-loan collapse villain, is dead at age 90
(Image credit: Arizona Republic/Twitter)

Charles H. Keating Jr., the infamous financier behind the biggest savings and loan disaster of the 1980s, died Tuesday. He was 90.

Keating ran the Phoenix-based American Continental Corp., in addition its subsidiary Lincoln Savings & Loan. Many of the depositors at Lincoln Savings & Loan, especially older savers and naive investors, were persuaded to cash in their federally insured deposits for $256 million worth of uninsured American Continental junk bonds. Keating was convicted in 1993 of swindling those customers and raiding the thrift. The failure of Lincoln Savings & Loan cost the government $3.4 billion.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.