Embezzler From UCI Sentenced to 4 Years

A woman who authorities said paid her bills, rent, car payments and her child’s college tuition with $270,000 she embezzled from UC Irvine was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison.

As a management services officer in the UCI medical school’s department of dermatology, Linda F. Manago, 50, had the power to write checks on an account intended for tax payments, patient refunds and the salaries of the doctors in the department, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Marion said.

But no one else had oversight of the account, Marion said, so no one spotted the payments that Manago made from 1993 to 1996 to an Arizona university and General Motors Acceptance Corp.

“That position carries with it a fair amount of responsibility,” said Dr. Thomas Cesario, dean of the UCI College of Medicine. “You rely heavily on the integrity of these individuals.”

After Manago wrote the checks, she replaced the money by transferring funds from other UCI accounts she oversaw, authorities said. But the dermatology chairman noticed irregularities in the department accounts and had Manago’s check-writing privileges revoked.

Manago resigned once university auditors began looking into the matter, authorities said.

“She was discovered only after she quit and continued to write personal checks on the account,” said Denise Azimi, spokeswoman for the state Franchise Tax Board. “That’s pretty arrogant.”

Manago, a 17-year university employee, told authorities she needed the money because she had a disabled husband and a sick granddaughter, Marion said.

In addition to grand theft and misuse of public funds, Manago pleaded guilty in July to filing false state income tax returns. She did not declare the embezzlement income on her returns for 1994 through 1996, Azimi said.

Manago, a former Tustin resident, was arrested March 3 at her new home in Savannah, Ga., and has been in custody ever since, authorities said.

Judge Margaret R. Anderson sentenced her to prison Thursday and ordered her to pay $200,000 in restitution to the regents of the University of California; $32,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest to the state; and $19,000 to Bank of America, where the dermatology department had its accounts. The bank must be repaid because it continued to honor checks Manago wrote after UCI took her name off the accounts, Marion said.

“This is a great case for us,” Azimi of the state tax board said. “We really want to impress upon people if you cheat on your taxes you will pay a price.”

Cesario said UCI has tightened its financial oversight since Manago left. And to make the department accounts solvent again, he said, university dermatologists have volunteered to do extra work and deposit those fees into the depleted accounts.

“They work harder and take home less,” he said. “This is a small department, so this is a great deal of hardship. Every nickel is important to us.”