Charles Keating's enterprises began to suffer financial problems and were investigated by federal regulators.
76 Facts About Charles Keating
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Charles Keating served four and a half years in prison before those convictions were overturned in 1996.
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Charles Keating spent his final years in low-profile real estate activities until his death in 2014.
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Charles Keating was born on December 4,1923, in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a devout Roman Catholic family.
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Charles Keating was the son of Adele and Charles Humphrey Keating.
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Charles Keating grew up in the Avondale and Clifton neighborhoods of that city.
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Charles Keating began swimming at a Catholic summer camp and became passionately involved in the sport.
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Charles Keating attended St Xavier High School, where he was a good student, was on the swimming team all four years, and ran track and played football.
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Charles Keating trained in the Navy Air Corps to become a carrier-based pilot flying Grumman F6F Hellcats.
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Charles Keating was not injured at Naval Air Station Vero Beach when he failed to lower the landing gear on his Hellcat wrecking his plane in a belly landing.
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Charles Keating was ready to return to college after finishing his Navy service in 1945.
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Charles Keating cut a deal with the University of Cincinnati wherein it would accept for academic credit much of his Navy service, then he would take six months of liberal arts courses before entering its law school.
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Charles Keating won the 200-yard breaststroke at the Ohio Intercollegiate Conference championship in 1945.
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On March 30,1946, Charles Keating competed in the 200-yard breaststroke at the NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships at Yale University's Payne Whitney Gymnasium.
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Charles Keating received his law degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1948, and would later be named a member of the university's Athletic Hall of Fame.
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Charles Keating was a long-time supporter of US swimming and beginning in 1969 he and his brother William donated $600,000 to St Xavier High School in Cincinnati to build a state-of-the-art competition pool.
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Charles Keating funded Cincinnati's Marlins swim club; six swimmers on the 1980 Summer Olympics squad were from its roster, including future Olympic champion Mary T Meagher.
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When he later moved to Phoenix, Charles Keating built the Phoenix Swim Club, where Olympians trained.
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Charles Keating was an athletically minded Catholic from an established Cincinnati family.
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Charles Keating was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions in combat.
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Charles Keating was admitted to the US Supreme Court bar in 1958.
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In 1960, Lindner and Charles Keating created American Financial Corporation, a holding company of Lindner's disparate businesses that created further subsidiaries and financial instruments, all doing business with each other.
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Charles Keating was named to the board of directors of the company in 1963.
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In 1956, Charles Keating joined a priest leading a group of Catholics in Cincinnati who were concerned about the dangers of pornography, and he began giving talks on the subject to parents and other groups.
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In 1958, Charles Keating testified before the House Judiciary Committee on mail-order pornography, saying that it was "capable of poisoning any mind at any age and of perverting our entire younger generation", and that it was closely tied to juvenile delinquency, while quoting a Senate Committee report that "part of the Communist conspiracy was to print ".
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Charles Keating mentioned links between pornography and Communism at other times, but distanced himself from the more fervent anti-Communist groups of the early 1960s.
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The structure of CDL was initially decentralized, but Charles Keating grew frustrated with some local chapters taking aggressive actions he did not approve of, and so he gave it a more controlled focus with a national magazine, film production, and a greater role in legal actions.
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In September 1970, Charles Keating was granted a temporary restraining order from the DC Federal District Court to delay publication of the report, stating that he needed access to all the report's backing materials and time to write a dissent.
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Several days later, Charles Keating was given the desired materials and two weeks to write his report by the committee.
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Charles Keating tried to prevent newsstands near his office from selling Playboy and Oui magazines.
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Charles Keating denounced the Ramada Inn chain for offering adult programming on cable television to guests.
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Citizens for Decent Literature and Charles Keating often warned about homosexuality as an example of what they saw as perverse behavior.
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The film Perversion for Profit had included a claim that homosexuals had a slogan saying that "today's conquest is tomorrow's competition"; in a 1977 speech in Miami, Charles Keating repeated this phrase, concluding from it that homosexuality represented an endless "seduction of the innocent".
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Charles Keating had easy access to credit lines, which allowed it to continually grow.
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Charles Keating left his law practice in 1972 and formally joined American Financial Corporation, by now a $1 billion enterprise, as executive vice president.
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Charles Keating became Lindner's person in charge of firing employees from newly acquired companies.
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Charles Keating took on an operational involvement in The Cincinnati Enquirer, the town's only morning newspaper.
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Charles Keating interfered in editorial decisions, such as adding coverage to high school sports that he or Lindner's sons were involved in.
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Charles Keating was involved in American Financial's 1974 sale of Bantam Books, and its decision that year not to enter the investment banking field.
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In 1975 and 1976, several stockholder lawsuits were filed against American Financial, and Charles Keating was under fire for aspects involving unsecured loans, stock warrants, and the sale of the Enquirer.
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Charles Keating resigned from American Financial in August 1976, with conflicting stories as to whether or not Charles Keating and Lindner had remained close or whether they had fallen out.
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Charles Keating moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1976 to run the real estate firm American Continental Homes, a struggling, millions-losing homebuilding spin-off of American Financial that was given over to Charles Keating for $300,000 as part of his departure package.
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In practice, Charles Keating was blamed for much of the irregular financial practices that had gone on and his reputation was significantly damaged.
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Charles Keating reaped benefits from the move to Arizona, a wide-open territory in both a physical and business sense that allowed someone a fresh start.
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Charles Keating turned the now-renamed American Continental Corporation around, adding various operations and divisions in a structure somewhat reminiscent of American Financial.
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Charles Keating III had a fast career rise within the company.
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In 1979, Charles Keating served as head of fundraising in the Southwest for John Connally's campaign for the 1980 Republican Party presidential nomination.
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In early December 1979, Charles Keating was named campaign manager, with the existing manager being demoted to campaign strategist.
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The campaign continued to struggle, and, by late February 1980, Charles Keating was out as manager, with Connally taking the role.
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Charles Keating believed that the regulators were against him because he opposed their rules.
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Charles Keating told his staff that some of the San Francisco regulators were likely "homos" who were "out to get him" for his strong moral views.
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Charles Keating had, or would soon make, legal political contributions of about $1.3 million to the senators, and he called on them to help him resist the regulators.
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Charles Keating became a personal friend of McCain following their initial contacts in 1981, and McCain was the only one of the five with close social and personal ties to Charles Keating.
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Charles Keating asked that Lincoln be given a lenient judgment by the FHLBB, so it could limit its high risk investments and get into the relatively safe home mortgage business, allowing the business to survive.
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Meanwhile, Charles Keating filed a lawsuit against the FHLBB, saying it had leaked confidential information about Lincoln.
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Charles Keating was triumphant in having defeated the regulators, whom he despised as useless relics from an outmoded financial past, and defended his high salary and business practices.
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Charles Keating spent about $500,000 on radio advertisements in the Phoenix area to improve his public image; the commercials stressed his real estate projects and his family-oriented values.
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In October 1988, Charles Keating opened his most extravagant real estate project ever, the 250-acre, 600-room The Phoenician Resort at the base of Camelback Mountain.
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American Continental wrote rules saying that Estrella homeowners could not "intentionally terminat[e] a human pregnancy" or possess "adult material", but removed them once Charles Keating was informed that such covenants were unconstitutional.
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In late 1988, Charles Keating began desperate attempts to sell Lincoln; regulators rejected one $50 million potential sale due to the buyers not meeting federal requirements.
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Charles Keating tried to arrange junk bond deals with Michael Milken and place bets in the global currency markets to generate cash, but the moves failed and he lost $11 million in one month alone.
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Charles Keating got Senators DeConcini and Cranston to pressure the regulators to let a sale go through, but this time the lawmakers were ignored.
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In September 1989, Charles Keating was hit with a $1.1 billion fraud and racketeering action, filed against him by the regulators.
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Charles Keating blamed government regulators for the failure of Lincoln Savings and sued for control over the bank.
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Charles Keating went to jail when he could not post a $5 million bond.
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Charles Keating was convicted in December 1991 of 17 counts of fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy.
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The judge ordered Charles Keating to pay restitution of $122 million to the government, but Charles Keating said he was $10 million in debt and had no assets to sell.
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One case filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission was settled in 1994: Charles Keating said he was bankrupt but agreed to repay millions should any hidden assets be discovered.
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Charles Keating was said to have gotten along well with other prisoners and served as best man at weddings for some that he met there.
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Charles Keating admitted to having committed four counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud by extracting nearly $1 million from American Continental Corp while already anticipating the collapse that happened weeks later.
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Charles Keating moved in with his daughter Mary and son-in-law Gary Hall Sr.
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Charles Keating kept a low profile in his business operations, and declined comment during John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign when the Keating Five scandal was brought up again by the press.
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Charles Keating died in a Phoenix hospital on March 31,2014, at age 90, after an undisclosed illness of several weeks.
74.
Charlie Charles Keating built things, and, at some level that haunts anyone who looks over his records, he thought his schemes would work.
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Charles Keating steadfastly maintained that it was not his mistakes or criminal deeds but regulators' actions that were responsible for the major losses.
76.
Charles Keating, portrayed by James Cromwell, appeared in Milos Forman's 1996 film The People vs Larry Flynt, leading a Citizens for Decent Literature charge against Flynt's Hustler Magazine.