Criminal Case Marked by Mysteries

Her saga is as intriguing as her name -- Mecklieia Jovanivachie LaVaughn Ghiyaibraieyaire.

The former Valencia resident pleaded guilty to six counts of grand theft and burglary and awaits deportation, possibly to England, though it’s unclear if she is really a British citizen. Other parts of her background also are in doubt.

ExxonMobil says that, contrary to her claims, her father is not chief executive of its operations in Angola. Georgia Tech has no record of her earning a degree in nuclear engineering. And the Pentagon cannot verify that she ever taught remedial math to sailors.

But it’s clear that Ghiyaibraieyaire’s activities could influence whether her husband, a Los Angeles County firefighter, goes to prison. Ghiyaibraieyaire, 27, said her husband knew nothing of her wrongdoing, and he has insisted he is innocent.

“It was love to the point of blinding me,” said Darra Van Cleveland, a 15-year firefighter with no criminal record.

Cleveland, 45, is scheduled to stand trial this week for allegedly helping his wife pass bad checks throughout the San Fernando Valley. But to understand his tale one must piece together her background. It’s not easy.

“What people have to realize is my reality is not their perception. Whatever perception you have of me, it really doesn’t matter because your reality is not mine,” said Ghiyaibraieyaire, from the Santa Ana City Jail.

Ghiyaibraieyaire (pronounced GEE-yah-bray-air) spoke of a privileged childhood, saying she was born to wealthy Indian parents in London, raised like a princess and spoiled by her oil executive father.

“I just never wanted for anything, the only thing he wouldn’t buy me was a pony,” she said.

By the age of 15, she said, she attended Georgia Tech, becoming a nuclear engineer five years later. She also said she was working for NATO at U.S. Navy bases when she came to the United States on holiday in June 2000.

Upon her arrival in California in November 2000, she said, she discovered that her luggage, including identification, was lost at the airport. This is why she can’t prove who she really is, she says.

This is the story she told her husband, a quiet divorced single father, when they met through mutual friends that same month. Cleveland said he believed everything she told him.

But, she left out a few details -- a conviction for check fraud in Florida and an outstanding deportation order.

“I think she’s a professional con artist,” said Officer Laurie Weber of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in Florida. “She gave me this long name, bizarre name, when she was arrested. I think she just made that up.”

She was convicted Sept. 21, 2000, of passing bad checks, under the alias Sheila Jeanette Daniels, and served 58 days in jail.

Although British authorities could not verify that she was a citizen, a deportation order to England was made after she failed to appear for an immigration hearing in Orlando on Jan. 18, 2001.

By that time, she was already in California, living with Cleveland. The couple married in November 2001.

“Our relationship was great. I had no reason to suspect or be snooping,” Cleveland said.

He entrusted his wife with everything -- she handled their finances, housing arrangements and mail.

Whenever Cleveland asked if they had enough money to pay their bills, his wife told him not to worry, that her generous family and friends from her NATO days would wire money whenever she asked. “He just trusted me on that,” she said.

But her rich parents occasionally cut her off, she said, because they were unhappy that she had forsaken an arranged marriage to marry Cleveland. In May 2002, she later admitted in court, she started forging her husband’s name on checks she found in the garbage. They were for an old account he had closed.

In September 2002, two months before their first wedding anniversary, they were arrested in Valencia.

“He had no clue,” she said in her interview. “He never thought his wife would do something fishy.”

In one incident that would lead to charges against the couple, prosecutors said, Ghiyaibraieyaire made bogus deposits to a bank account and then tried to have Cleveland withdraw $6,500 from the account before the checks bounced.

The account belonged to Cleveland’s daughter. Ghiyaibraieyaire later testified that she told Cleveland that a friend of hers, Herbert James Downer of Illinois, would wire $6,500 to the account. When Cleveland tried to withdraw the money, bank officials alerted police because the deposits his wife made to that same account just days earlier never cleared.

She still insists that Downer wired money to the account, but in a telephone interview Downer said he did no such thing. He also said that he had only met her once, at a store on a military base in Great Lakes, Ill.

Her story is so unbelievable, prosecutors say, that it’s hard to imagine Cleveland falling for it. Although she testified on his behalf -- admitting her guilt, hoping to absolve his -- a judge refused to dismiss the charges against him in January, citing her credibility problems.

Far from an accomplice, his attorney said, Cleveland was her biggest victim. “She saw a sucker and the rest is history .... You don’t turn around and rip somebody off after 15 years of being a firefighter,” said Paul J. Cohen.

If convicted, Cleveland, who has been suspended without pay, faces more than five years in prison.

Ghiyaibraieyaire, meanwhile, maintains that she is who she says she is and hopes her marriage can survive. “If I didn’t love my husband I could have just done all this stuff and just left him, but I didn’t do that,” she said.

But this month, Cleveland filed for divorce, and declined to discuss it.

“What was important to me is that she made me a happy person when she came into my life,” he said.

It’s unclear when or where she might be deported, because the British still can’t verify that she is a citizen.

In her interview, she said she wanted to set something straight. “Mecklieia” is a nickname. Her real name, she said, is Khooshkhahbhahdhi Ladki Jovanivachie LaVaughn Ghiyaibraieyaire.