Credit-Card Spree Lands Ex-Student Leader in Prison

Michael Bang, the former student body president at Grossmont College who went on a spending spree with a college credit card, was sentenced Wednesday to two years in state prison for violating his probation when he escaped from a work furlough project and fled the state.

Probation was denied Bang, 27, who pleaded guilty May 18 to grand theft as a result of his fraudulent spending that cost the college $27,725.

“Mr. Bang, I gave you a chance,” said San Diego Municipal Judge H. Ronald Domnitz. “You had a chance, and you walked away from it. I gave you a break the first time, and it wasn’t enough.”

Domnitz was the same judge who on Aug. 18 ordered Bang to a work-furlough center on the condition that Bang start paying back the college. But Bang vanished hours after his release and was arrested the next month in Texas.

“I don’t know if you’re a con man or not. I don’t think you have the willingness to comply with the terms of probation,” concluded Domnitz.

The judge ordered Bang to pay a fine of $8,500, the amount of a promissory note Bang signed in jail with the college as part of a pay-back agreement.

Because Bang has already spent 259 days in jail, he will probably only serve about nine more months in prison, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Sally Williams. She had sought a three-year term.

Bang is the only one of four co-defendants to go to state prison as a result of the June, 1987, spending spree that took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

The students used the credit card to charge items including daily massages, hair styling, phone-equipped rental cars, $450-a-day suites, $150-a-day poolside cabanas catered with goose pate. The lavish spending continued until the American Express Co. cut off their credit.

Bang’s attorney, Patricia Ulibarra, argued in court documents that Bang had had a rough life, beginning with his mother’s suicide in 1962.

She also alleged in court documents that Bang was molested by a local priest from the time he was 9 until he was 17. He tried to commit suicide when he was 15 by taking an overdose of sleeping pills, Ulibarra said.

Former student body vice president Larry Humpal, 27, served 74 days in County Jail. He was later released by Domnitz on the condition that he pay back the college $350 a month during his five-year probation.

Humpal’s mother, Peggy Klecha, 46, former secretary to the associated students board, and former executive secretary David Brooks, 19, were given no jail time, but they paid $12,500 back to the school.