Ex-Chancellor, Wife Surrender in Fraud Case

Former UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Robert A. Huttenback and his wife surrendered to authorities Monday and were arrested on suspicion of embezzlement, insurance fraud and tax evasion.

Accompanied by a lawyer, a public relations representative and a band of friends and supporters, Huttenback, 59, and his wife Freda, 55, appeared at the Santa Barbara County Jail where they were searched, photographed, fingerprinted and booked before being released on their own recognizance.

Asked what he thought of the accusations, Huttenback said: “I think they are a complete obscenity and outrage. There are people in the district attorney’s office that think they are going to further their own careers by persecuting me.”

Criminal Probe

The case against the Huttenbacks stems from a criminal investigation launched in October, 1986, at the request of a Santa Barbara grand jury. It is the latest and most dramatic development in a saga of several years of troubles for the award-winning historian and former head of the University of California’s Santa Barbara campus.

Last July, Huttenback was asked to resign as chancellor, largely because of difficulties with the faculty and a dispute over what a UC auditor said was the inappropriate use of $174,000 of university funds for the Huttenbacks’ personal residence.

Huttenback, who remains a tenured professor at the university, and his wife are being accused not only of embezzlement in connection with those expenditures but also of tax evasion for allegedly failing to report those funds on their state income tax returns.

The Huttenbacks also face a tax evasion charge stemming from what a sheriff’s investigator says was an insurance scam designed to finance a trip to Europe.

As outlined by Detective Owen B. Thomas, the Huttenbacks reported the loss of $8,000 worth of silver to their insurance company, collected the money to pay for a trip to Italy and then “found” the silver without ever notifying the insurance company.

Tax Evasion Charge

The Huttenbacks face a third charge of state income tax evasion for allegedly claiming charitable deductions for which they allegedly were reimbursed by the university.

In a March 5 letter to Patrick McKinley, assistant district attorney in charge of the case, the Huttenbacks’ lawyer, George C. Eskin, called the case absurd--”replete with false statements, omissions and erroneous conclusions.”

In regard to the issue of embezzlement and tax fraud on expenditures at the Huttenbacks’ residence, Eskin argued that the Huttenbacks still do not know how much was spent on their kitchen because the work was performed by a university employee who since has pleaded no contest to three counts of embezzlement connected with building projects at the university.

(Huttenback agreed last year after a university audit to repay the university for the home improvements. He said then that he had regarded the expenditures as justified because the house was used extensively for university fund-raising functions.)

As far as the accusation that they evaded taxes by illegally declaring charitable deductions, Eskin provided the district attorney with a list of checks and payroll deductions that he said “thoroughly refutes the accusation and raises serious questions about the credibility of the entire affidavit (in which the investigator’s allegations are contained) and its sources of information.”

Insurance Issue

Finally, Eskin argued that Huttenback did inform the insurance company that a portion of their silver had been recovered and can produce a phone bill documenting that a call was made on the very day the silver was found. The reason the money was not returned was because the insurance company informed the Huttenbacks that because enough silver was still missing they were entitled to keep the $8,000,

What’s more, Eskin said, despite the investigator’s implication to the contrary, there was no legal requirement whatsoever that the Huttenbacks use the money to replace the silver. In fact, they did use it for that purpose and can produce receipts and appropriate customs declarations--details that the investigator obviously missed or overlooked, he said.

Though urged by his public relations adviser not to comment on the case, the former chancellor emerged from the booking session Monday carrying a tie and belt that he had been asked to remove and told reporters, “I guess I went through the usual humiliation of being searched and handled.”

Freda Huttenback, who emerged from the jail house wearing a long dark coat and sunglasses, refused any public statement, but according to her lawyer she said she felt like a “campus radical” during the booking.

Eskin said the couple’s surrender Monday was prearranged with the district attorney’s office.

At the conclusion of Huttenback’s brief comments to the press, he and his wife were whisked away in a maroon Lincoln Continental driven by one of their friends, merchant banker J. Cornelius O’Keefe Sr.

The couple are scheduled to appear for arraignment March 26 when they will be formally charged.

Among the Huttenbacks’ supporters Monday was Susan Peters, a vice president for Komar Marketing, a public relations firm, who said she had been retained for a newly formed organization called Justice for Huttenback, which hopes to raise $500,000 for the couple’s defense.

Prominent Couple

Also present were Stuart and Katherine Abercrombie of the family that owned Abercrombie & Fitch, the sporting goods chain. Katherine Abercrombie serves on the UC Santa Barbara Foundation, which is being audited by the state for its expenditure of funds under the Huttenback administration.

“I know a lot of people who have changed their wills because of this,” Katherine Abercrombie said, referring to what she believed was the callous treatment by the university of the former chancellor. “They were leaving money to the university and now they are not.”

In an interview Saturday in Los Angeles before his surrender, Huttenback categorically denied that he is guilty of the accusations against him and said that he is being “victimized” by people who are out to get him. Among them, he said, are liberal members of the UC Santa Barbara faculty and Democratic members of the state Senate who resented Huttenback’s outspoken nature and his growing ties to wealthy Republicans in Santa Barbara County.

Huttenback said he “actually did a hell of a good job” while he was chancellor of the university. “That’s a great university now and it certainly wasn’t before I came. Sure I offended some people and stepped on some toes. (But) if I am guilty of anything, it’s not covering my own rear end.”

John Hurst reported from Santa Barbara and Anne C. Roark from Los Angeles.