Ken Good, 67, key figure in ’88 Colorado banking scandal
DENVER - Ken Good, a former Colorado real estate dealer who had connections to Denver’s Silverado banking scandal in 1988, died in Dallas Saturday.
The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported that Mr. Good had leukemia. He was 67.
Mr. Good was viewed by many as a wheeler-dealer real estate and development tycoon who led a lavish lifestyle, according to newspaper accounts.
He was involved in putting together packages of land for development in Colorado and later in Tampa. One of his deals put together parcels of land that later became the Park Meadows mall, a major shopping district in south-suburban Denver.
In 1981, he was involved in real estate transactions that amounted to about $250 million, according to a Denver Post story.
But the bottom fell out of the real estate business and he lost $50 million, he told the Post.
His connections to Neil Bush, son of President George H.W. Bush, were complicated and led to Mr. Good’s appearance before the US House Banking Committee.
The allegation was that Mr. Good used his friendship with Neil Bush, who was a Silverado director, to get favors from Silverado that resulted in millions of dollars of losses to the savings and loan, according to Steve Wilmsen, who wrote a book about the Silverado scandal.
“That helped put Silverado under,’’ said Wilmsen, a former Denver Post reporter now with the Boston Globe.
In the 1980s, Mr. Good was accused of getting inside information about Tosco Corp., an oil-shale development company over which he was trying to gain control, from Paula Herzmark, who was in the Cabinet of Colorado’s governor, Dick Lamm. She was involved in a relationship with Mr. Good.
The charges were investigated by a Colorado ethics board. Herzmark was director of the Department of Local Affairs, a department involved in making grants to county and local governments.
Herzmark said Wednesday she did have a relationship with Mr. Good but that allegations that she leaked information to him were ludicrous and proved unfounded in federal court.
“He had a gambling streak, and won ’em and lost ’em,’’ she said of his real estate deals.
Wilmsen said Wednesday that Mr. Good seemed to have a “manic drive and wanted to sell you a vision. He was never a guy who thought he was smarter than other people.’’