Ex-UCLA Official Sentenced for Theft

The former director of student counseling at UCLA was ordered by a federal judge Monday to report to the Bureau of Prisons on Jan. 31 to begin serving five months behind bars for stealing a valuable oil painting from the university and selling it to a New York art gallery for $200,000.

After her release, Jane Crawford, 50, will have to spend another five months under home detention wearing an electronic monitoring device.

Crawford, who is being treated for a kidney disorder and heart problems, collapsed and lost consciousness immediately after hearing Judge Ronald S.W. Lew pronounce sentence Nov. 8. Paramedics rushed her to County/USC Medical Center for tests.

The proceedings were delayed until Monday when Crawford returned to court in a wheelchair. At the request of her lawyer, Martin S. Bakst, the judge modified his sentencing decree to permit Crawford to spend the second five months of her 10-month sentence at home, rather than in a halfway house, so that she can care for her father, a stroke victim.

She was ordered to pay $41,280 restitution to New York’s Spanierman Gallery, which unwittingly bought the stolen painting, “Frost Flowers, Ipswich 1889,� by the late Arthur Wesley Dow.

The gallery is suing UCLA and Crawford in federal court to establish legal title to the painting. It contends that the university failed to take proper measures to safeguard the landscape from theft, a claim disputed by UCLA.