Facing Off Over Jeffrey Lash’s Cache

By FRANCES SHARPE | Editor-in-Chief

Three people who say they were conned out of millions of dollars by the late Jeffrey “Skinny Bob” Lash, a man who claimed to be an undercover government agent and a human-alien hybrid, are squaring off with his relatives over his estate.

Lash’s decomposing body was found in an SUV on Palisades Drive in the Highlands neighborhood of Pacific Palisades on July 17, 2015.

The discovery led police to the condo he shared for 17 years with fiancée Catherine Nebron where they discovered 1,200 guns, six and a half tons of ammunition and $230,000 in cash.

More firearms, vehicles, electronics, camera equipment and other items belonging to Lash have since been found in storage units in Los Angeles.

Nebron and her ex-husband Phil Gorin, who used to live together in the Highlands condo, as well as Michelle L., a Los Angeles business owner who says she had a 31-year relationship with Lash, claim they were coerced by Lash to make these purchases and therefore have a right to the property.

Nine of Lash’s cousins, some of whom are represented by Palisadian estate attorney Sonja Panajotovic, disagree.

They have filed a petition claiming ownership of the property and are asking the probate court to hand it over to them.

In a Downtown Los Angeles courtroom on Jan. 22, attorneys representing the family members told the court their clients want to take possession of the property so they can sell some of it in order to pay the rental fees on Lash’s storage units.

“There is an urgency since these fees are coming due,” Panajatovic told the judge.

Attorneys for Nebron and Michelle want to keep this from happening.

“They want to start selling the property,” Nebron’s attorney Harland Braun told the Palisadian-Post. “But the issue is whose property is it? They haven’t shown Jeffrey Lash ever had a job or any money of his own.”

At stake in the face-off are the firearms—at one point valued at as much as $5 million but now thought to be worth much less—vehicles and other goods.

Michelle, who began a romantic relationship with Lash in 1984 and lived with him from 1986 to 1998, has filed a creditor’s claim for $1,888,030. Her claim joins Gorin’s, which is seeking $2.5 million.

Michelle, who spoke extensively to the Post about her relationship with Lash, alleges in her claim that in 1986, Lash moved into her one-bedroom apartment, claiming that he had lost his own home “due to a terrorist act and that he had lost a great deal of his ‘business.’”

Lash told her that the “entire training division of his ‘company’ had closed due to the terrorist act and that he no longer had any money, having spent his entire personal fortune trying to end the terrorist group,” the claim continues.

That’s when she started footing the bills for him, the claim alleges. As time went on, Lash allegedly demanded more and more money.

He convinced her that he would die without her help, according to the claim, or that “something would happen to her. He told her several stories of people who supposedly gave up on him and were killed by his ‘staff.’”

Lash, who had been ill for several years according to Michelle, allegedly promised her that he would give her millions once he was well enough to work again.

But Lash never got better. He died July 3, 2015, about two weeks before his body was discovered in the SUV in the Palisades.

The LA County Coroner’s Office told the Post Lash died of natural causes due to vascular disease.

Nebron is expected to file a creditor’s claim soon.