Judge Tells Charity Solicitor to Account for Money : Courts: Tentative decision would bar further fund raising until $3 million to $6 million in donations can be traced. Deputy attorney general contends that more than 90% went to pay defendants’ fees.

SANTA ANA —  A Superior Court judge has tentatively barred an Irvine fund-raiser and several associates from soliciting charitable donations in the state until they account for millions of dollars raised since 1988.

Judge Robert A. Knox, in a tentative decision issued last week, gave Mitchell Gold and his associates 120 days to account for an estimated $3 million to $6 million raised with the promise that the money would be used for specific charities, such as granting the wishes of dying veterans. The judge also ordered the defendants to pay $6,000 for each day that they exceed his deadline.

In recent court documents, Deputy Atty. Gen. H. Chester Horn alleges Gold and his associates raised more than $15 million by “misleading those donors into believing that the funds were being raised for a variety of charitable purposes when, in fact, more than 90% of all the funds were used to pay the defendants’ fund-raising fees.”

Lawyers for the defendants, however, have argued among other things in recent court documents that there is a “clear dispute as to the obligations of commercial fund-raisers.”

Horn on Monday called the judge’s tentative decision a “very important step” in a case that has been described as one of the largest involving allegations of charity fraud in California.

“When you call people on the telephone and make representation to them to get them to donate money for charity, you better be telling the truth,” Horn said.

The ruling, which came following a nine-day court trial in August, should become final in about a week, Horn said. The defendants, including two companies owned by Gold, Orange County Charitable Services and North American Funding Corps., could be fined and ordered to pay money back to the charities, depending on what the accounting reveals, he said.

Lawyers representing Gold and his associates could not be reached for comment Monday.

In a previous interview with The Times, Gold denied allegations of wrongdoing and said he was an honest businessman who was being “harassed” by the attorney general’s office, which initiated the lawsuit in 1992.

As part of the tentative decision, the judge fined Gold and his companies $1,000 after finding them in contempt of court for ignoring a previous preliminary injunction ordering them to account for the $3 million to $6 million.

The tentative decision also would allow the state to try to recoup from the defendants an estimated $300,000 in prosecution costs, Horn said.