Woman Held in Marriage-for-Money Scam : * Courts: She allegedly stole from a Huntington Beach man she wed while still married to another.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  Lilah Jean Raihl exchanged wedding vows with Huntington Beach businessman Johannes Boelhouwer in November, 1987. More than eight months later, she disappeared.

But prosecutors say the 37-year-old woman left behind a trail of $35,000 in credit card charges, part of $325,000 that she allegedly stole from her 61-year-old husband.

Two weeks ago, Raihl was arrested in Las Vegas. And Orange County prosecutors filed criminal charges that effectively accuse her of marrying her husband for his money.

“This is probably one of the most unusual cases I’ve ever had,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph D’Agostino said in a recent interview. Investigators believe that Raihl has been involved in marriage-for-money schemes with different husbands in Arizona, California and Utah.

Raihl was taken into custody after an Orange County district attorney’s investigator traced her to Las Vegas, where she was living under the name of Jenna Jensen, one of six aliases she allegedly used. Technically, she was arrested on an Arizona warrant that accused her of violating parole stemming from a fraud conviction that involved her marriage to an 82-year-old Arizona man. She faces a maximum penalty of nine years in prison and is awaiting an Oct. 8 hearing in Phoenix.

Neither Raihl nor her attorney could be reached for comment.

Boelhouwer said he knew the green-eyed, red-haired woman liked expensive jewelry and new clothes. But he said he did not know she was married to another man.

“After the honeymoon,” Boelhouwer said, “things really changed. She was never home.”

In Orange County, Raihl faces felony charges of fraud and grand theft of Boelhouwer’s assets, D’Agostino said. He said he will seek Raihl’s extradition to California when the Arizona case is completed. If convicted, Raihl faces a maximum penalty of eight years in prison on the California charges.

D’Agostino said the evidence against Raihl, who was married to two men at the same time, shows a pattern of misrepresentation that prompted him to file charges against her.

“When she married (Boelhouwer), it was based on an allegation of misrepresentation, because she married for the purpose of strictly stealing his money,” D’Agostino said. “The fraud charge is an allegation of insurance fraud because she reported a ($13,600) diamond ring as missing or stolen and collected on the insurance . . . the ring was not lost or stolen.”

Although the marriage did not last even a year, Boelhouwer, who was born in Indonesia and came to the United States in 1957, still rages about his financial losses. He was married to Raihl from Nov. 30, 1987, to Aug. 26, 1988, when she disappeared. (Boelhouwer eventually obtained an annulment on Oct. 2, 1989, citing Raihl’s alleged fraud.)

The couple first met through acquaintances of the Mormon Church. Boelhouwer, who would later convert to Mormonism to marry her, said he could not forget what she said when she met him: “Oh, don’t worry. I know all about you.”

Boelhouwer, who described her as a woman with a flair for the dramatic, said she told him that she was single and had divorced a multimillionaire in Utah. She said she had worked for 15 years as a special agent with the FBI, and nine years as a secretary for an insurance company.

After the wedding, Boelhouwer contends, Raihl charged $35,000 in credit card purchases for new clothes, furniture and electronic equipment, which he believed were shipped to various relatives in Washington. She also transferred $13,600 from their business account to a secret fund, he said, and spent a $155,000 equity loan on a brass bed, two refrigerators and other big-ticket items outfitting an office for a new business venture.

“She set up a phony business in Costa Mesa, using $29,000 and wound up only making $175. It closed in 28 days,” he said.

He got wind of her ruse, he said, after she left him and he started going through the things she had left at his house. He discovered driver’s licenses with more than one name and handwritten notes, some listing her “goals,” including plans for marrying a man and then using his money for plastic surgery on her nose and breasts and expensive dental work.

According to Sharon Smith, a Maricopa County prosecutor handling Raihl’s criminal case in Phoenix, Raihl, who was then known as Susan Hansen, married machine oiler Walter Inkley, 60, in Magna, Utah, in 1984. No charges were filed against Raihl in Utah, but prosecutors in Arizona and California have mentioned Raihl’s marriage to Inkley in support of filing criminal fraud charges against her.

“She took (Inkley) for all he was worth, his money, even his furniture,” said Boelhouwer, who hired a private investigator to help him get information about Raihl. “I’ve got boxes full of evidence.”

After her marriage to Inkley, prosecutors said, Raihl later left Utah for California, where she married Boelhouwer while still married to Inkley. Prosecutors said Raihl--armed with a list of eligible Mormon bachelors--later left Boelhouwer to go to Arizona. It was in Arizona that Raihl, now Lila Jean Raihl, met and married Walter E. Weston in December, 1989, according to Scottsdale police. He was 82. She was 36.

Raihl met Weston and less than a week later they were married, said Scottsdale Police Detective Scott Reed. At the time, Raihl was feuding with Weston’s family.

“Lila refused to admit the family inside Weston’s house, and refused for him to talk to them. They knew of the marriage, but when he failed to show up during the holidays, they got worried and filed (a) missing person’s report,” Reed said.

When Weston’s family searched his home, they found notebooks linked to Raihl, outlining plans to first find a man, marry him, then use his money to buy a car and other personal items “all documented,” Smith said.

When the Westons returned home, police arrested Raihl and found Weston’s personal finance book in Raihl’s purse, with the amounts and bank account numbers copied in Raihl’s handwriting on a separate slip of paper, Smith said.

“Weston testified that he never let anyone ever see that book, including his family,” Smith said.

Prosecutors argued that Raihl was guilty of fraud, but her attorney argued that during marriages, couples often lie to each other and steal. But when the judge agreed to allow Boelhouwer and Inkley to testify against Raihl, she pleaded guilty to the felony fraud charge in October, 1990. She was sentenced to six months in jail, four years’ probation and ordered to pay back Weston’s credit card losses and court costs. The judge also directed that before she married anyone else, she must first notify the court.

Three months later, on Jan. 11, she allegedly escaped from a work detail at the jail, said D’Agostino, who filed the grand theft and fraud charges against Raihl that ultimately ended in her recapture.

D’Agostino credited Orange County Dist. Atty. investigator Ken Weigand, who traced Raihl to Las Vegas and Kansas, and back to Las Vegas.

Boelhouwer can only wait until Raihl is brought to trial in Orange County. He claims that when she left him, she emptied his safe deposit box of a watch, deeds, leases on property he owned, his passport and naturalization papers, cash, and a collection of stamps and gold coins.