All of this speculation is pretty moot. There are things we cannot know about this accident, and things that we will *never* know. We do know that Ara was Instrument-rated and took annual 135 checkrides which most likely included some hood work. *EVERY* VFR 135 ride I've ever taken (and I've taken a bunch) included a UA recovery. So he was - at very least - qualified to fly under IFR even if he was not current and legal (approved) to do so. How many people on internet boards like this one claim that a pilot is not a pilot with an Instrument Rating, as if that imbues one with some magical skill set that just might come in handy in a situation like this? (Obviously, that's bogus.)
But keying on that... We can surmise that Ara had a somewhat "casual" relationship with weather. If it is true that he flew over the Pacific, over a cloud deck to get offshore and then descended (probably IMC) to get under the marine layer and come back into the beach VFR, then we can also surmise that he was able to maintain some semblance of control over a helicopter by reference to the instruments only. But that's just a guess.
So what happened here? What went wrong so quickly? Was there a distraction or two just as the view outside went completely white? We're pretty sure that right after he punched-in, he called up ATC to report that he was climbing to 4,000', figuring that the guy he was talking to was familiar with who and where he was. Not so! They'd had a controller change and now the guy he was talking to didn't know Ara from Adam. This new controller had to go through the whole process of getting him radar identified, something the other controller presumably wouldn't have had to do. So now Ara has got to look down and put in a squawk. And while he was down there, he probably re-centered the GPS to Camarillo. I would *guess* that right then, Kobe keyed the intercom and said something like, "Hey, uhhh, Ara? Are we okay here, buddy? All I see outside is...nothing." And while those things were happening, the helicopter was banking over to the left, undetected because "someone" took his eyes off the attitude indicator and the helicopter did what helicopters do when you're not paying attention.
Unusual Attitude recovery practice is great. We all should get some. Trouble is, when it happens for real, when you're already down to just a couple of hundred feet above the rising terrain when you punch-in, your chances of getting the wings level, stopping the descent and getting a climb going before smashing into something are pretty...how shall we say...zero. So Ara maybe didn't have any "real world" UA practice lately. Big deal, what would it have helped in that case? Once he got into the UA, it was game-over.
Some of us seem to think that flying a helicopter and not crashing is SOOOO EASY! Any idiot can do it. The truth is that sometimes circumstances conspire and combine against us and a bunch of crap happens at exactly the wrong time, and maybe we're not operating at 100% that day for whatever reason.. Maybe on any other day, Ara would've initiated the straight-ahead climb to get above the layer and he would've popped out on top, perhaps as he'd done once or twice before. No harm, no foul, no one would have to know...and he'd continue on with the flight like nothing happened.