Equity Funding Corporation of America - circa 1970's Specimen Stock Certificate

Specimen Stock printed by Security-Columbian Banknote Company. Equity Funding Corporation of America was a Los Angeles-based U.S. financial conglomerate that marketed a package of mutual funds and life insurance to private individuals in the 1960s and 70s.

It collapsed in scandal in 1973 after former employee Ronald Secrist and securities analyst Ray Dirks blew the whistle on massive accounting fraud, including a computer system dedicated exclusively to creating and maintaining fictitious insurance policies. Investigation found that from 1964 onward, as many as 100 company employees had engaged in organized deception of investors, auditors, reinsurers and regulatory authorities.

Equity Funding was founded in 1960. Its two top officials and shareholders were Stanley Goldblum and Michael Riordan (brother of future Mayor of Los Angeles Richard Riordan), who was killed in January 1969 in a mudslide that destroyed his home in Los Angeles. The company went public in 1964. By 1972, it was one of the ten largest life insurance companies in the United States, as well as the fastest growing one, with (claimed) assets of $500 million. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_Funding_Corporation_of_America