Rolls' Royalty -- Prestigious British Car Criminals' No. 1 Choice

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. - The image of the most prestigious car in the world is being tarnished by some of those who drive it: Southern California's white-collar criminals.

"Whenever we get a case now, we always look for the Rolls," said chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Terree Bowers in Los Angeles. Nearly every major white-collar criminal prosecuted by his office in the past two years has driven one.

In California, John Molinaro and Janet McKinzie, convicted of looting North America Savings and Loan, each had a Rolls Royce.

John M. Coughlan and his two sons of Newport Beach, convicted last year of an $8 million real estate fraud, bought three matching Rolls Royces in the same year.

Douglas Blankenship of San Juan Capistrano, awaiting trial on charges he conned banks out of $25 million, was arrested while parking his gold Rolls.

And then there's Edwin T. McBirney III, convicted of looting Sunbelt Savings & Loan. Sunbelt paid $3 million for dozens of Rolls Royces once owned by former Oregon guru Bhagwan Rajneesh.

"We'd rather they drove one of those German cars," said Rolls Royce spokesman Reg Abbiss, quickly adding that "everybody who buys a Rolls Royce or Bentley shows exquisite judgment no matter what his or her background."

Some of the cars were bought at Newport Auto Center in Newport Beach, the largest Rolls dealership in the United States. Last year, the company sold 140 new Rolls Royces and 80 "pre-owned."

David Murphy, the British-born sales manager at Newport Auto, has personally served some infamous people.

"The criminal element can appreciate the finer things in life just as much as anyone else," joked Murphy, who said that McKinzie paid cash up front for her 1986 Corniche II. "She was flush with cash," he said. "We didn't know where the money came from."

The Rolls isn't the most expensive car in the world, but it's probably the most prestigious. Each car takes months to assemble by hand, and fetches from $130,000 to $226,000.

Once trouble strikes, the public relations value of a Rolls plummets. Prosecutors - and reporters for that matter - harp on the car if it was bought with ill-gotten gains.

"I think the media makes a point of saying if the criminal is driving a Rolls Royce," said Jill Amadio, a Newport Beach public-relations agent. "If he is driving a Cadillac, they don't mention it."