Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : Church Embezzling Suspect Surrenders : COURTS

The former director of Catholic Charities of Orange County, sought on charges of embezzling $43,000 from the group, surfaced last week along with allegations that he had impersonated a priest and had given most of the missing money to an emotionally troubled 19-year-old man.

Adair Allen Simmons, 37, voluntarily returned to Orange County from Florida and was arraigned in Orange County Municipal Court. He had been known as Brother Andrew, but was not a priest, prosecutors allege.

Prosecutors say Simmons rose from a low-level position with Catholic Charities to become its director, then embezzled $43,000 between January and July, 1986.

They allege the embezzlement stemmed from Simmons’ “professional and social” relationship with a 19-year-old man, who has not been charged with any crime.

The man had come to Catholic Charities in February, 1985, with “emotional problems” and came in contact with Simmons, who “was involved in the counseling of individuals with mental or emotional problems,” investigators’ reports state.

Prosecutors alleged Simmons began writing checks on Catholic Charities accounts for the man’s benefit, among them three checks to the man himself totaling $2,000; two totaling $2,300 to USC for the man’s tuition; one to purchase a computer for the man; one for $17,930 to buy the man a new convertible and two totaling nearly $7,500 for a cruise Simmons and the man took together.

Church officials and investigators for the district attorney’s office say Simmons might have been charged months earlier if the diocese had not dismissed a veteran controller who first suspected that something was amiss.

On Aug. 19, 1986, controller James Cranham gave “Simmons a memo about some of these questionable expenses and requested some back-up documentation. This was the first indication that there was a problem with Simmons’ use of the Catholic Charities money,” according to a report prepared by an investigator for the district attorney’s office.

Less than an hour after he put that memo on Simmons’ desk, Cranham was fired, after 25 years of employment with the Diocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Orange.

But Msgr. Michael Driscoll, chancellor of the diocese, said that the timing of the memo’s delivery and Cranham’s termination was a coincidence and a surprise to him. Driscoll said he and the late Bishop William R. Johnson had decided several months earlier to dismiss Cranham as part of an effort to streamline and computerize the diocese, and that Cranham had been notified of the pending action.

When Cranham was finally let go, Driscoll said, it was not “because there was going to be some investigation” resulting from the memo.