O.C.’s Gotech Focus of Major Fraud Probe : Construction: State accuses custom home builder of siphoning nearly $1 million from clients and subcontractors.

In one of the largest contractor fraud cases ever filed 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.

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. She declined further comment.

The civil complaint was filed against Gotech Builders; its owner, Jeffrey Charles Weiner, and several former Gotech officials 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. 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 after a Times Orange County Edition 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 license board--the state agency responsible for licensing and disciplining 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 accusation was Larry Stephen Hampton, whose contractor’s license was used to operate Gotech. 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’s license, she was named in the complaint as the architect of most of the companies’ fraudulent sales techniques. She also was married to Weiner for a year and a half.

The marriage was annulled in April, 1991, but Gayron continued to work with Weiner until early this year. Weiner testified in a recent bankruptcy hearing that he and Gayron still live in a luxury home in Fullerton built by Gotech.

Gayron, reached Tuesday at her new employment referral business in Brea, said that “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.

When Gotech’s license was suspended by the contractors board last October, 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--a process that could free him of liability from claims by customers of his two companies.

The Times articles showed how Weiner was able to use the license board’s own policies to stifle customer complaints and for years avoid being investigated.

The license board, which said it was greatly understaffed, generally refused to accept complaints about contractors who used mandatory private arbitration to resolve contract disputes with their customers. After a series of angry public hearings in Sacramento late last year, the license board changed its policy and now accepts complaints in all cases.

Watkins acknowledged Tuesday that the board’s former policy of ignoring complaints helped Systems and Gotech to operate for years without coming to regulators’ attention.