Ex-Tustin Official Given Year in Jail for Embezzling $165,000

A former assistant finance director for the City of Tustin pleaded no contest Wednesday to a charge of embezzling about $165,000 in city funds over a four-year period and was sentenced to a year in the Orange County Jail.

Gay Lona Marian Hamblin, 45, was fired in 1985 after city officials discovered that she had used her access to city computers to cover up her daughter’s $300 water bill. An investigation turned up evidence that she had been stealing from the city for at least four years.

Superior Court Judge Myron S. Brown ordered her to report to the County Jail on June 23.

Hamblin’s former husband, Wallace Brent Hamblin, and her current husband, Michael Joseph Patterson, pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of receiving stolen funds. Brown sentenced each of them to 90 days in County Jail. But he stayed those sentences for four months and said they would not have to serve the time if they paid their share of the restitution by August.

Brown ordered the three defendants to pay a total of $33,850 in restitution to the city. The judge left it to the Probation Department to decide how they will split the payments.

A bonding company paid $100,000 of the amount lost by the city, and Hamblin has agreed to pay about $30,000 through the sale of her house. The restitution ordered by Brown is the remainder of the amount lost.

Ronald G. Brower, the woman’s attorney, said he was pleased with the sentence for Hamblin because the crime was serious enough to warrant a state prison term.

“But she had never committed any crime in her life, and the Probation Department recommended probation, which pleased us,” Brower said.

Brower said Hamblin does not deny any of the allegations against her. She was able to cover up the embezzlement for so many years because the funds fell within a 2% error factor used by the city’s auditors, according to sources close to the investigation.