For more than six years, a Southern California fiduciary allegedly doctored bank statements and misled probate courts to siphon more than $6 million from vulnerable clients under his care, according to the California Attorney General’s Office, which describes the scheme as “Ponzi-style” in nature.
Gregory Oveross, a longtime Los Angeles-area fiduciary, and his accountant, Faranita L. Corvalan, were charged with grand theft in May in what prosecutors call one of the largest fiduciary theft cases in California history. Both have pleaded not guilty and remain free on bond while awaiting trial.
But a review of court files and other public records shows the warning signs were there well before charges were filed — and that neither the courts nor the state agency responsible for licensing fiduciaries caught them in time. The case adds to a growing body of evidence, examined in an ongoing investigation into California’s probate courts, that oversight of fiduciaries — professionals entrusted with managing the money and daily lives of people who cannot care for themselves — remains dangerously thin.
In one instance cited by prosecutors, Oveross wrote himself 19 checks totaling $670,000 over a single year, drawing from one client’s accounts. State accounting forms require fiduciaries to list check numbers for every transaction, but Oveross left that section blank. The court accepted the filing anyway — Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Deborah L. Christian signed off on the accounting without flagging the omission.
“Not having check numbers would be a big red flag,” said Judge Sandra Bean, who oversees probate matters in Alameda County. “It’s all very practical. If something smells bad, it probably is.”
The check-number requirement dates back to 2006, when state lawmakers responded to earlier fiduciary scandals by mandating more detailed financial reporting, specifically so courts could catch missing or suspicious transactions. In the Oveross case, that safeguard appears to have failed.
In a separate matter, the Attorney General’s Office alleges Oveross never paid out a $1.7 million inheritance to beneficiaries after being appointed to administer a deceased client’s estate. Court records show no follow-up hearing was ever scheduled to confirm the money had actually reached the heirs.
That gap is partly a matter of inconsistent rules. State law does not require probate courts to automatically schedule a review after ordering a final distribution of assets. Some counties do so as standard practice; others, including Sacramento, San Joaquin and Santa Clara, do not. During the period when Oveross’s alleged thefts occurred, Los Angeles County courts did not automatically calendar such hearings either. That changed this past January, when the court began scheduling follow-up reviews after approving final distributions, according to court spokesperson Rob Oftring.
Records also show Oveross failed to disclose a pending misconduct complaint on his annual statement to the state’s Professional Fiduciaries Bureau — a filing that relies largely on self-reporting and is submitted under penalty of perjury. In both 2022 and 2023, Oveross left blank a question asking whether he had settled any complaints against him, yet the bureau renewed his license each year regardless.
A 2021 law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom was supposed to close some of these gaps by requiring courts to notify the bureau whenever a judge sanctioned a fiduciary for licensing violations. But that provision never took effect because the Legislature never allocated funding for it.
The Professional Fiduciaries Bureau declined to answer questions about Oveross specifically, citing the ongoing criminal case. More broadly, the bureau has said it relies on the courts to catch misconduct, while the courts often say they rely on the bureau — a circular arrangement that leaves few checks in place.
The bureau itself was created two decades ago in the wake of a news investigation that revealed judges were failing to stop fiduciary abuse and conflicts of interest. Yet the same patterns identified back then appear to be resurfacing.
Oftring said an attorney reviews every fiduciary accounting filed with the court to verify that required documentation is included, that financial activity is properly explained, and that the numbers balance. Asked why the court approved Oveross’s incomplete accounting despite the missing check numbers, Oftring said judges and staff are barred from commenting on pending legal matters.
In its arrest declaration, the Attorney General’s Office described what it called a “systematic and pervasive pattern of asset misappropriation, discrepancies, unauthorized fund diversions and non-compliance with probate court mandates.” Attorneys representing Oveross and Corvalan did not respond to requests for comment.
A LICENSE THAT STAYED ACTIVE
Jean C. Elbert suffered from dementia, and with her closest living relative also battling Alzheimer’s, her family turned to the probate court for help. In August 2018, the court appointed Oveross — by then an established fiduciary — to manage her care and finances.
Over the following year, according to prosecutors, Oveross wrote himself the 19 checks totaling $670,000 from Elbert’s accounts without disclosing them in his official accounting. After Elbert died in August 2019, Oveross reported to the court that he had $1.8 million remaining to distribute to her heirs, and the court ordered him to do so.
But prosecutors say Oveross withheld $764,000 owed to Elbert’s brother. It wasn’t until the brother’s son sued to recover his father’s share of the inheritance that an attorney uncovered what had happened — Oveross, according to court filings, had drained money from the conservatorship and later used funds belonging to other clients to eventually make good on the inheritance payment.
The two sides reached a settlement in May 2024. Yet state records show Oveross never disclosed that settlement in his 2025 annual statement to the bureau, despite being required to do so. In total, prosecutors say Oveross diverted $1.3 million in unauthorized payments from Elbert’s accounts.
A similar pattern emerged in the estate of Guadalupe Rodriguez Diaz, who died in 2019 leaving behind roughly $2 million. After settling her debts, Oveross told the court that $1.6 million remained for her beneficiaries. Prosecutors allege he then opened a secondary set of accounts and funneled money to himself, to Corvalan, and to another trust under his control — ultimately spending nearly the entire estate on himself and his associates. Diaz’s heirs, according to prosecutors, never received any of the money owed to them.
“Notably, no transactions related to heir distributions were observed within these accounts,” prosecutors wrote in court filings.
The criminal investigation began after Elbert’s nephew and another of Oveross’s clients filed complaints with the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau in 2023. A bureau investigator soon referred the matter to the California Department of Justice.
Despite that referral, Oveross continued working as a licensed fiduciary for more than two years while the investigation unfolded. His license was finally suspended less than two weeks after his arrest — and only then did the bureau demand a complete accounting of every case in which he was serving as a fiduciary, information he was supposed to have reported accurately all along.
Original source: CalMatters
