CALABASAS : Condo Embezzler Gets 6-Year Sentence

A Westwood man who pleaded no contest to embezzling $1.4 million from a Calabasas condominium owners’ association while on probation for a similar offense was sentenced Wednesday to six years in state prison, authorities said.

Spencer John (Jay) Gobus, 46, must serve at least three years before he is eligible for parole, said Allan C. Fork, of the Major Fraud Division of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Gobus, who operated a property management company, has been in jail in lieu of $1.4-million bail since his arrest Sept. 7.

Judge George Schiavelli handed down the sentence in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Gobus stole the money from the Oak Park-Calabasas homeowners association between Feb. 1, 1985, and July 31, 1993, Fork said. Gobus used some of that money to pay $45,000 in restitution for a prior conviction in 1992 for embezzling money from the Old Orchard Condominium Assn. in Santa Clarita, Fork said.

Gobus diverted money from the Calabasas association’s bank account to his own account, prosecutors said. He also forged the signature of an association board member and altered another check for his services by writing in a higher figure, Fork said.

Eleven members of the association were at the sentencing, Fork said. Two, he said, told the judge that Gobus had caused the association a financial hardship.

The homeowners have been hard-pressed to maintain their 268-unit complex on Park Granada, because there was only $31,000 left in reserve when Gobus quit managing the property in June, 1993, said Ronald Stone, a professor of accounting at Cal State Northridge, who helped uncover the theft.

The $1.4 million has apparently been spent and the association’s only probable recourse is to recover the money through an insurance policy the organization had against such losses, according to Stone.

Banks, he said, might also be held liable for cashing some of the forged checks.