Arrested Bookkeeper Accused of Perjury, Theft : Courts: Investigators say the man gave false credentials during contentious child-support and custody battle.

A Calabasas bookkeeper has been arrested on suspicion of perjury and grand theft for allegedly claiming false credentials so he could collect an expert witness fee in an acrimonious child-support and custody battle.

During the case of Novorr vs. Novorr, heard in November in the Downtown courtroom of Superior Court Judge Raymond Mirales, Steven Z. Kaller allegedly claimed to be a certified public accountant and tenured professor of accounting at Cal State Northridge, police and prosecutors say.

“In fact, he’s an unlicensed nothing,” said John Benane, an investigator for the state Department of Consumer Affairs. “He’s a bookkeeper.”

The two perjury counts stem from statements Kaller allegedly made about his credentials in a court declaration and during his testimony. The theft charge alleges he accepted a $1,000 fee as an expert witness fee when he wasn’t one.

Kaller, 46, of Thousand Oaks, was handcuffed at his Calabasas office Tuesday night, booked at the Lost Hills sheriff’s station and released on $90,000 bail, authorities said.

He could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Encino lawyer Gary J. Weyman uncovered Kaller’s alleged resume-padding, court records say, during a case that was so hotly contested the lawyers involved referred to it as “a real liars’ contest.”

Weyman declined comment. But his story is laid out in court records.

Weyman, who represented a man whose ex-wife was seeking higher child-support payments from him, asserted in a court declaration that Kaller was hired by the ex-wife’s lawyer. Kaller’s job was to audit the ex-husband’s tax returns to determine the man’s income before a hearing at which Mirales would decide whether the child-support payments should be increased.

In sworn court declarations Nov. 20 and in testimony three days later, Kaller stated that he was a certified public accountant, held two masters’ degrees and was a tenured accounting professor who had taught at CSUN since 1972.

Weyman said in court papers that when he checked Kaller’s credentials, he discovered that all of these claims were untrue.

The state Board of Accountancy said Kaller had never been licensed as a CPA, and CSUN’s personnel director and business school dean said he’d never taught there, Benane, the consumer affairs investigator, stated.

Kaller wrote to the judge after his credentials were disputed, saying, “I didn’t believe at the time I stated I was a CPA that this was was going to degenerate into such a hostile situation.”

Benane said in an interview that Kaller’s expert testimony was disregarded, the ex-husband wound up paying less child support, and Kaller became the target of a criminal investigation.

Kaller is scheduled to be arraigned in Van Nuys Superior Court on Oct. 17. The felony charges carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.