Broker Says Bad Checks Were to Calm His Clients : Trial: He testifies that investors were told not to cash the drafts immediately. He contends that he helped Ira Reiner refinance his house, which the district attorney denies.
A onetime commodities broker, with ties to Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, Mayor Tom Bradley and other prominent Democrats, testified Monday that he wrote huge checks on empty bank accounts not to cheat investors but as part of regular business practices in Beverly Hills’ easy-money circles.
Mark R. Weinberg, 37, also said in Van Nuys Superior Court that client friends routinely gave him up to $200,000 in investment funds without a written contract.
And when he got behind in repaying them, he said, he several times gave clients rubber checks to calm their fears but only if they promised not to cash them immediately.
Weinberg is accused of stealing more than $1 million from prominent clients in phony investment schemes. Alleged victims include James Aubrey, former president of CBS, and John Paul Jones De Joria, president of John Paul Mitchell Systems, a Santa Clarita-based hair products company.
Weinberg also stunned the court Monday by asserting that he helped Reiner arrange refinancing of his house--a claim that a Reiner spokeswoman flatly denied in a subsequent telephone interview.
Reiner, who got $200,000 in cash and a $50,000 loan from Weinberg in his successful 1984 campaign to unseat Dist. Atty. Robert Philibosian, has been subpoenaed to testify at the trial today.
Weinberg also gave $84,000 in the mid-1980s to the Los Angeles mayor and was the host of posh parties at his Beverly Hills home for Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale and Sens. Alan Cranston of California and Bill Bradley of New Jersey.
During a hearing Monday on a Reiner bid to avoid testifying, Weinberg, who is representing himself, became angered by an affidavit entered on the district attorney’s behalf.
In the sworn declaration, Reiner said he was acquainted with Weinberg from 1983 to July, 1985, when he was told that Weinberg was under investigation for “possible criminal conduct.”
Reiner said his opinion of Weinberg “changed from good to bad.”
“Then why did it take him until 1991 to pay back the $50,000 he owed me?” Weinberg demanded of Deputy County Counsel David F. Skjeie, who represented Reiner in court.
A Reiner campaign spokesman said earlier that the $50,000 was not returned until six months ago because it was thought to be a contribution.
In response to Reiner’s sworn declaration that he “had no conversation or interaction” with Weinberg since July, 1985, Weinberg advised Skjeie to “ask Mr. Reiner how he got financing on his house.”
In a later interview conducted through one of the defendant’s court-appointed investigators, Weinberg said he arranged refinancing of the district attorney’s house, but would provide no further details.
Reiner spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said the claim was “absolutely false.”
Gibbons said Reiner bought his Hollywood Hills home in 1972 and remodeled it in 1985, but financed the remodeling through HomeFed Bank, the same lender he dealt with 13 years earlier.
The case is being prosecuted by the state attorney general’s office because Judge John S. Fisher ruled that Reiner’s office might have a potential conflict of interest stemming from the contributions.
