Allen Lefferdink was broke when he arrived in Boulder. And, to the relief of his swindled investors, he left Boulder broke, as well. In-between, in the 1950s, the failed financier built a bogus multi-million-dollar empire based on worthless securities.

He also left his mark on Boulder with the construction of the Colorado Insurance Building at 1919 14th Street.

In 1949, the Nebraska native founded the Colorado Credit Life Insurance Company in a formerly city-owned building on 14th Street. He offered one-stop shopping for insurance, savings, loans, and investments –– all underwritten by stocks purchased on the installment plan.

At the time, the press called him “a youthful financial wizard.”

Lefferdink wasted no time in demolishing the old building and constructing a nine-story retail/office building at 14th and Walnut streets, complete with penthouse and rooftop helipad. After it opened in 1956, the locals watched Lefferdink’s helicopter land and depart, as his personal pilot shuttled prominent businessmen between the building and Denver’s Stapleton Airport.

For 24 years, Joslin’s department store occupied the basement, first, second, and third floors, with the latest fashions and home furnishings displayed in the building’s storefront windows. The elegant store became a downtown shopping alternative to J. C. Penney, Sears Roebuck, and Montgomery Ward, all, at the time, on Pearl Street.

Above Joslin’s were four floors of office space. On the eighth floor was Boulder’s KBOL radio station, along with the reception area that led up to Lefferdink’s office in the 9th-floor penthouse.

Lefferdink’s empire began to fall apart in September 1960, when a civil suit in Denver District Court alleged 27 manipulations in stocks, notes, and advances between the defendant’s corporations. He was accused of shifting bank balances from his more lucrative companies to others in need of funds.

That same year, his wife divorced him for “extreme mental cruelty” amid rumors that his secretary/mistress lived in the penthouse.

By then, Lefferdink had broken ground on his Park Allen Hotel, planned for the site of today’s Boulder County Justice Center. At the time, beer (excluding low-alcohol), wine, and liquor were not permitted within Boulder’s city limits. Financing fell apart when Lefferdink’s prospective lenders wouldn’t approve a loan for a hotel without a liquor license.

In 1961, a federal grand jury indicted Lefferdink for fraud and conspiracy in bilking 20,000 investors out of more than $15 million. He was acquitted, but his days in Boulder were over.

Lefferdink then moved to New York, where he set up a string of international businesses and established a pyramid of banks, mutual funds, and insurance companies.

Finally, he moved offshore, onto his yacht, the “Sea Wolf,” but in 1976 he sailed into Miami, where new fraud and conspiracy charges did bring a conviction. A court found that he had bilked thousands of investors out of millions of dollars.

The “super swindler,” as Lefferdink sometimes was called, was sent to prison and died in 2003 at the age of 85. Today, only a few Boulder residents even remember him, but most can’t miss the building that became his legacy. It’s now owned by the W.W. Reynolds & Company.

Completed before the days of the city’s height limit and now simply the “Colorado Building,” Lefferdink’s legacy still dominates the downtown skyline.