Investors cheer AGA Financial arrests

Sonoma County investors allegedly swindled by Gary Armitage and Jeff Guidi cheered Friday’s news that the pair had been arrested and could spend the rest of their lives in prison if convicted of multiple counts of securities fraud.

“It’s about time,” said Anita Thrall, 70, who lost her $150,000 retirement savings. “I was beginning to wonder.”

Thrall, who has worked at Healdsburg Hospital for more than 40 years, said she has given up all hope of ever recovering any of her investment.

“It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was to me. It was all I had,” Thrall said.

Armitage convinced Thrall to hand over her retirement savings instead of paying off the mortgage on her Healdsburg home, she said. He assured her the risk-free investments would guarantee her a steady retirement income, Thrall said.

“Now, if nothing else, even if I won’t get a cent, at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that he didn’t get away with it,” Thrall said.

That, of course, remains to be seen. Armitage and Guidi have been charged with multiple counts of securities fraud and residential burglary, the second charge related to the fact they entered people’s home when peddling their investments.

They, along with co-defendant James Koenig, face more than 100 years in prison if convicted, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

Oakmont resident Lynn Luthi, 85, also had given up hope of recovering any of her $700,000 investment.

Luthi, the first victim to step forward to discuss her losses, has since been forced to take out a reverse mortgage on her home to make ends meet. An admittedly naive investor, Luthi said Armitage had a way of both reassuring and patronizing his clients, urging them to leave everything to him and not to worry.

She was pleased to see the news of his arrest in her Friday paper.

“He did very, very bad things to a lot of people, and I hope he suffers to some degree,” Luthi said.

But Luthi, who turned to Armitage to manage her money several years ago after her husband died of brain cancer, says she doesn’t have enough time left to spend it being angry at Armitage or herself.

“I lost a hell of a lot of money, but I’m getting by,” Luthi said. “I’ve moved on.”

Kathy Adams, a longtime friend of Armitage’s wife, Nell, lost more than $400,000 in investments with AGA. She said her anger, too, has passed. She now just feels sorry for his family.

“My heart aches for his wife and family for the way he deceived them,” Adams said. “They still feel he’s innocent, and it’s sad that they had to face this horrible truth this way.”

Adams is one of the lucky ones. She had joined a group of investors who were able to wrest control of one of her investments, in Peoria, Ariz., from the network of companies affiliated with the Koenig-owned Redding real estate firm, Asset Real Estate and Investment.

Koenig was convicted of mail fraud in 1986 stemming from a gold scam. He served time in federal prison and was ordered to pay $5 million in restitution to his victims.

Adams feels that Koenig is the mastermind behind the AGA Financial scandal, and Armitage got pulled into it and lost his ethical and moral bearings.

“I don’t think he started out to do this,” she said.