DAYTON PRESS RELEASE

INVESTORS RECOVER MORE THAN $43 MILLION IN SETTLEMENT
CIVIL RICO CLAIMS OVER THE SECURITIES GROUPS

NEW YORK, June 8 — Some of Wall Street’s most prominent players have paid more than $43 million to settle claims brought by a group of investors who charged them with a RICO civil conspiracy related to The Securities Groups run by Charles Atkins in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The settlement averted a trial scheduled to have begun before the Hon. Sidney H. Stein in federal district court here.

The collapse of The Securities Groups led to bankruptcy proceedings and was followed by the criminal prosecution of Charles Atkins and others on charges they had been involved with the creation of more than $1.3 billion in bogus tax losses through fictitious trading in government securities. Then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudolph W. Giuliani was quoted at the time as calling the fraud one of the largest ever uncovered by the government.

Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corporation and Carroll McEntee & McGinley, Inc., now known as HSBC Securities, Inc., jointly paid $42 million to the group of plaintiffs. Other settling defendants paid additional amounts and included Asher Edelman and entities related to him, First Pennco Securities Corporation, William Hack and Stuart Brothers. Hack had been convicted in the U.S. v. Atkins trial.

“After eight years of determined effort, our clients will recover an amount which is better than 90% of the funds they invested, said Larry Jackson of Christa & Jackson, a Los Angeles litigation firm which represented the plaintiffs’ group.

The plaintiffs’ group has 188 members, including many prominent Wall Street and Hollywood figures, including Preston and Laurence Tisch, Norman Lear and Lea and Sidney Poitier. The group’s litigation efforts were managed by a steering committee made up of individual plaintiffs, enabling the plaintiffs to be represented efficiently by a single law firm.

Christa & Jackson is a litigation law firm based in Los Angeles and concentrating in complex business litigation matters. Laura K. Christa and Laurence D. Jackson represented the plaintiffs. Phillips Nizer Benjamin Krim & Ballon LLP, New York, acted as local counsel for the plaintiffs. Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette was represented by former U.S. Attorney Robert B. Fiske, Jr. of Davis Polk & Wardwell, New York. Carroll McEntee & McGinley, Inc. was represented by Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis, Philadelphia. Other counsel included Kronish Lieb Weiner & Hellman LLP for William Hack; Stewart Occhipinti & Makow, LLP for Edelman and related entities; and Pollack & Kaminsky for Posner and First Pennco.

All settling defendants denied any wrongdoing.

- - o0o - -