Leading Castaic Citizen Accused of Grand Theft

CASTAIC â€”  Edwin Seth Brown, a prominent community activist in the Santa Clarita Valley, was charged Wednesday with felony counts of grand theft and elder abuse by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.

Brown, 44, who was arrested on separate charges in December for allegedly falsifying court documents, surrendered Wednesday at Van Nuys Municipal Court and was later released on $100,000 bail, said Ashley Posner, one of Brown’s attorneys.

Brown, a former Castaic Town Council member and the city’s 1994 Man of the Year, is a leading figure in local charity groups and director of the Samuel Dixon Health Center, a low-cost clinic that provides health care to much of the impoverished section of Val Verde.

The newest charges accuse Brown of swindling Olive Ruby, an elderly Santa Clarita woman, out of $250,000 in 1992, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Ardith Javan.

Detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department allege that Brown pocketed money that Ruby had intended to go to one of the charities he is involved with, Posner said.

Ruby has been declared to be in a state of “diminished mental capacity� by two doctors, Javan said. “And the way I read it she was in the state at the time she gave Brown the money.�

Ruby is a currently a conservatee of the Public Guardian’s Office, Javan said.

Brown’s other attorney, Paula Elden, said that Ruby gave Brown the money as a “personal gift.� A judge recently held that Ruby was “incompetent of managing her own affairs,� Posner said.

In December, Brown was accused of crediting Jay Kapac and John Milton Campbell with more court-imposed community service hours than they had completed at the clinic and attempting to mislead the court as to where the two men had done their work. The district attorney alleges that the men had served some of their time at Brown’s home.

He has pleaded innocent to those charges.

Brown was unavailable for comment Wednesday evening. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Aug. 27, the same day he is to appear for a pretrial hearing on the earlier charges, Posner said.