Weinberg Says His Accusers are Biased : Courts: The ex-commodities trader testifies that his conviction would aid clients he is charged with bilking.

A onetime commodities trader accused of bilking wealthy clients out of more than $1 million said Tuesday in Van Nuys Superior Court that prosecution witnesses who testified at his fraud trial altered their stories to advance pending civil suits.

In a closing statement to jurors, Mark R. Weinberg, 37, argued that almost all those who testified against him have a bias because his conviction would make it easier for them to collect from the remnants of his personal financial empire.

Weinberg, whose finances collapsed in 1989 and 1990 after he all but abandoned the commodities business to unsuccessfully produce variety-talk shows for television, is facing up to 10 years in prison if convicted on four counts of grand theft and eight counts of writing bad checks.

He contended that he was a victim of business reversals and that the charges against him stem from debts that he was working to pay off when he was charged.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Tricia Ann Bigelow scoffed at Weinberg’s defense, asking jurors, “Do you believe him or do you believe everyone else?”

She termed him a “clever con man” with a wide circle of friends in high places who structured financial deals to leave himself room to deny any criminal intent.

Jurors began deliberating in the case late Tuesday at the conclusion of five weeks of testimony.

Alleged victims of Weinberg’s scheme include John Paul Jones De Joria, president of John Paul Mitchell Systems, a Santa Clarita-based hair products firm, and Susan Aubrey, daughter of former CBS President James Aubrey, and Dale Tittlemier, a Palmdale developer.

Weinberg also is accused of writing bad checks to two firms that handled the payroll for his three television shows, none of which has been sold.

Weinberg, who is representing himself in the case, called Mayor Tom Bradley and Dist. Atty.Ira Reiner to the stand to disprove suggestions by prosecution witnesses that he falsely claimed to have prominent friends in order to lure investors into giving him money without a contract.

Reiner acknowledged on the stand that he and Weinberg went to the 1984 Olympics together and that the defendant contributed $256,000 to his successful 1984 campaign for district attorney--about one-fourth of Reiner’s total in that race.

Records indicate that Weinberg also gave $84,000 in the mid-1980s to Bradley, $54,000 to U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston and hosted parties for several other U.S. senators and for Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale.

Prosecutor Bigelow sought to persuade jurors that evidence of Weinberg’s high-placed friends was irrelevant to the case.

She said that in 1989 and 1990, the defendant tried to keep his failing television efforts going by inducing clients to give him large sums, saying he would return the money in days with a hefty profit after completing a foreign currency trade.

But there were no trades, Bigelow said, and Weinberg spent much of the money financing television shows. He also gambled away at least $500,000 of clients’ money in Las Vegas, she said.

Weinberg contended that money he received from De Joria, Aubrey and Tittlemier was a series of loans, not funds given him to be invested in currency futures.

He also noted that both Susan Aubrey, who lost $100,000, and Tittlemier, who lost $300,000, gave him money through intermediaries, suggesting that his plans for the money were misrepresented to them by others.

He directly challenged key elements of the testimony of De Joria, the hair products magnate, who claims to have lost $450,000 that he said he gave to Weinberg to invest in futures but did not obtain a receipt.

Weinberg produced $510,000 in good checks he had written to De Joria in 1988 in an apparent effort to show that the two had a successful and informal business relationship before he ran into financial trouble with his television shows.

Weinberg also argued that the fraud and bad-check charges against him represented only a small part of his financial activities between 1988 and 1990, when up to $700,000 a month passed through his bank account.