Investigation of Estate Conservator Expands

RIVERSIDE — County prosecutors have broadened their investigation of alleged financial irregularities involving a private conservator and are now looking into payments they believe her attorney may have received from the estates she managed, according to court documents unsealed Friday.

The primary target of the investigation, Bonnie Cambalik, has previously admitted to authorities that she took about $100,000 from the estates she managed for people too infirm to handle their own affairs, according to a search warrant affidavit filed by the Riverside County district attorney’s office.

During an earlier search, prosecutors seized the ledger of one conservatorship managed by Cambalik, which included notations that the estate was “owed” about $300,000, according to the affidavit filed by a district attorney’s investigator that was released Friday.

The search also yielded ledgers indicating that in addition to the court-authorized fees that she and her attorney were entitled to receive, Cambalik dipped into estate funds to pay thousands of dollars more to herself and the lawyer, Michael J. Molloy of Riverside, according to the affidavit.

“On many of the ledgers there were handwritten notes . . . totaling court-ordered fees versus actual fees, with notations of the difference as overpayments or extra taken,” district attorney’s investigator Gerald K. Fox wrote in his affidavit.

The document says Cambalik told the investigator that Molloy was aware she had taken money from estates but that the attorney “continued to submit these false accountings and documents to the court” on her behalf.

Fox reported finding records for eight of Cambalik’s conservatorships “with notations of overpayments to Molloy totaling [about] $149,000 for a several-year period.”

Molloy, a Riverside probate attorney who has represented Cambalik and her business for more than 10 years, did not return phone calls Friday seeking comment.

Cambalik and her criminal defense attorney previously have declined comment on the investigation. No arrests have been made in the probe.

The affidavit unsealed Friday was filed last week by county prosecutors seeking a search warrant for Molloy’s home and office. Those searches were conducted Thursday, but prosecutors would not discuss what was found.

Prosecutors have said their investigation could take a year, because they are reviewing the files of about 400 conservatorships assigned to Cambalik by the Riverside probate judge over the last 10 years.

The district attorney’s probe was launched last month after allegations were raised that Cambalik had stolen money, jewelry, antiques and other property from the estates of people deemed by the court to be unable to manage their own assets.

Cambalik started West Coast Conservatorships in 1986, and it grew to become the largest of a handful of private businesses in Riverside that were appointed by the court to run others’ financial affairs. Most conservatorships are assigned to relatives or the county public guardian’s office.