Businessman Sentenced To Prison After Securities Fraud Guilty Plea By JUDITH HELMS An Atlanta businessman was sentenced this week in Circuit Court to a year and a day in prison and fined S5.000 after he pleaded guilty to securities fraud. Al D. Townsend's request for probation will be ruled on Nov. 24 by Judge Randall Thomas. Five companies of which Townsend is an officer also got $5,000 fines when guilty pleas were entered Atlas United Financial Corp.. Atlas Financial Corp.. Public National Life Insurance Co. Inc.. PNL Co. Inc. and Dugco Inc. The state dismissed charges against another Atlanta businessman. E.L. Sanders, and against James Fail of Birmingham. Fail "pleaded guilty 'for the company of which he is president. United Security Holding Co.. and a $5,000 fine was imposed against the firm. Indictments were returned by a Montgomery County grand jury in February on charges brought by the Alabama attorney general's office. Defendants were charged with defrauding Modern Home Life Insur ance Co.. its policyholders or creditors in an appearance in 1973 before the state insurance commissioner in which they gained approval for two transactions affecting Public National Life Insurance Co. policyholders. According to the indictment, policy reserve liabilities of Public National, approximately $12,160,547. were to be reinsured into and assumed by Modern Home. To secure such liabilities. Public National was to transfer to Modern Home assets falsely represented by defendants as having a value equal to the liabilities, including notes of Atlas Financial Corp. in face amounts totaling $5 million. In the second transaction, all outstanding capital stock of Modern Home was to be sold by defendants to one E. Pat Moore. The Atlas notes, according to the indictment, had a value greatly less than $5 million. The case, which was to have gone before a jury this week, was prosecuted by Deputy Atty. Gen. George Beck and special prosecutors Charles Crook and Maury Smith, both Montgomery law- vers. Ford Backer Sees National Health Program BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - U.S. Labor Secretary William Usery campaigning here for President Gerald Ford said Wednesday a national health insurance program would be in effect by 1980. But, Usery said Wednesday, it will be more costly than health service today. Usery said in a speech at University of Alabama in Birmingham that the nation should "think long and hard before we go down the routes in this area that some countries have gone." The labor secretary also said the "economy is good and it's improving." He called the recovery from recession "tremendous . . . fantastic." He said he thought labor leaders' endorsements