Media Release

Release Date: March 5, 1997
Release Number: V-63
Contact Name: Joseph Menez
Phone Number: 606.578.4680

Ohio Plan Officials Ordered to Restore More than $65,000 to Employee Benefit Plans

The trustees of both the profit sharing and the defined benefit pension plan for Equity Planning Corporation in Beachwood, Ohio, were ordered to restore to both plans a total of $65,754 in a consent order and judgment obtained today by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Named as defendants in the consent order and judgment along with trustees Richard Reinberg and Ned Weingart were the plan sponsor and administrator Equity Planning Corporation and Equity Planning Holding Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Equity Planning Corporation.

In a four-count complaint filed simultaneously with the consent order and judgment, the defendants allegedly :

• Allowed from October 1981 through September 1987 the corporation's profit sharing and employee benefit plans to hold employer securities that were not permissible under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and from October 1981 through 1982 and in February 1986, permitted both plans to hold more than 10 percent of plan assets in qualifying employer securities, when the corporations's plan documents disallowed this investment;

• Failed since January 1988 to collect money owed to the plans from a series of loans;

• Failed to collect principal interest payments from a July 1983 loan to Fayo Leasing Company; and

• Failed to make principal or interest payments to the plans for loans dating from July 1993 through April 1994.

In addition to the ordered restitution, the defendants must make to both plans, they are permanently barred from serving as trustees or service providers for ERISA-covered plans.

The case resulted from an investigation by the Cincinnati Regional Office of the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration into violation of ERISA.

The consent order and judgment was filed in the federal district court in Cleveland, Ohio.

Metzler v. Equity Planning Corporation et al
Civil Action No. 1:97CV00563

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