Gotech Accused in $1-Million Fraud Complaint : Building: Orange County firm allegedly siphoned funds from clients in one of the state’s largest contractor fraud cases.

In one of the largest contractor fraud cases in California, the state attorney general’s office has accused an Orange County custom home builder of siphoning nearly $1 million from the accounts of dozens of clients and subcontractors since 1990.

The civil complaint was filed against Gotech Builders; its owner, Jeffrey Charles Weiner, and several former Gotech executives on behalf of the Contractors State License Board. It seeks to permanently bar Weiner and the others from obtaining contractors’ licenses in California or from working for any licensed contractor in the state.

Anne Mendoza, a deputy state attorney general, said in a brief telephone interview that she also intends to begin a criminal investigation in connection with the case, but she declined to give further details.

Weiner could not be reached for comment.

The complaint was filed with the California Department of Consumers Affairs last month, though no public announcement was made. A hearing will be held before an administrative law judge later this year.

The state’s probe of Gotech began late last year, following a Los Angeles Times investigation of the company and its activities. The state’s accusation details $961,000 that Gotech and a predecessor company, called Systems Construction, allegedly diverted from customers’ construction accounts.

“I’ve never seen a bigger case,” said Paula Watkins, head of the Southern California regional office of the contractor licensing board--the state agency responsible for licensing and disciplining of building-trades contractors.

The defendants have been charged with illegally diverting funds from customers’ construction accounts and engaging in fraudulent sales techniques to entice customers to sign construction contracts. The company operated largely in Orange, Los Angeles, San Diego and Riverside counties.

Also named in the state complaint was Larry Stephen Hampton, whose contractor license Gotech used to operate. Also named was Richard K. Green, a former vice president of the company, and Ilene Gayron, a sales agent. Hampton and Green could not be reached for comment.

Although Gayron never held a contractor license, she was named in the complaint as the architect of most of the companies’ fraudulent sales techniques.

Gayron was married to Weiner for a year and a half, but the marriage was annulled in April 1991. Gayron continued to work with Weiner until early this year, and, according to Weiner during testimony in a recent bankruptcy hearing, she still lives with him in a luxury home in Fullerton built by Gotech.

Gayron, reached at her new employment referral business in Brea on Tuesday, said “nothing in (the complaint) is true. I was an employee, and I was just doing my job.” She and Hampton have notified the state that they intend to defend themselves in the administrative hearing.

Weiner and Green have not responded to the charges, according to Mendoza, the deputy attorney general.

In one case outlined in the state’s complaint, a Montebello couple paid Gotech $119,628--including $37,000 that the company allegedly withdrew from a construction account without authorization--for work on a new home that was to have cost $250,000.

After Gotech’s license was suspended by the contractors’ board in October, 1993, the only work that had been completed was minor grading on the site. None of the couple’s money has been refunded, and Weiner, the sole owner of Gotech, has since filed for bankruptcy liquidation.