Groom With Formula for Fraud Gets 3-Year Term

A man who had a written formula for marriage fraud and may have used it to marry as many as 11 women was sentenced Thursday to three years in state prison for looting his most recent wife’s bank accounts of more than $210,000.

Conrad Eugene Grohs Jr., 42, pleaded guilty in June to a single count of grand theft for taking the money from Arlene Karp Magnus, 47, a Studio City businesswoman he met last year through a singles magazine and married a few weeks later.

A single count of forgery was dropped in return for Grohs’ guilty plea, Deputy Dist. Atty. Judy L. Gray said.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dion Morrow gave Grohs the maximum term on the grand-theft conviction.

Grohs, known to Magnus as Dr. Andrew Afar, was arrested in June in Newport Beach, where he had been living on a boat with another woman. He had left Magnus in December when she confronted him about the missing money, much of it diverted from trust accounts set up to provide college educations for Magnus’ two sons, Gray said.

Magnus has filed for an annulment of the October, 1984, marriage.

Police said that Grohs’ 10th wife, 35-year-old Donna Blethen of San Francisco, lost more than $85,000 to Grohs but that no formal charges have been filed in that case. Blethen gave authorities notes that Grohs allegedly made about his marriage fraud technique.

“Behavior of the con. Identify their need such as money, power, sex,” the notes read. Gather “information about their dream, their financial positions, their past failure and success, their needs. . . . Develop dream around info gathered.”