Optician to Stand Trial in Theft of 3,635 Frames

A Granada Hills optician was ordered Thursday to stand trial on charges that she embezzled 3,635 eyeglass frames--valued at more than $109,000--from the medical group where she worked.

Linda Dultz, 45, is accused of taking the frames while working as an optician at the Facey Medical Group in Mission Hills between May, 1987, and April, 1988.

Prosecutors charged that Dultz ordered large shipments of eyeglass frames, then took them out of the building on the pretext that she had over-ordered. But instead of returning the frames to the manufacturers as she claimed, Dultz sold them, prosecutors alleged.

Dultz pleaded not guilty to felony charges of grand theft and embezzlement. If convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of six years in state prison.

Facey administrators testified in a preliminary hearing in San Fernando Municipal Court that they first suspected the problem when an internal audit and physical inventory of the medical center’s optics department could not account for 3,635 eyeglass frames.

Removal of Boxes

Dultz came under suspicion after purchasing agent Ricardo Perez told medical group administrators that the optician took several boxes of frames out of the building each week, saying she was delivering them to United Parcel Service to be shipped back to manufacturers.

“She said she was overstocked and was sending them back to the company through UPS. She said there was no room to store the large boxes,” Perez testified in court Thursday. “I even on a couple of occasions helped her load them into her car.”

Rodrigo Cruz, an internal auditor for Facey, testified that if Dultz returned the frames, the company would have received credit slips from the manufacturers. But the group has no such slips in its records--just hundreds of invoices for glasses frames for which Dultz approved payment, Cruz said.

Los Angeles police Detective Art Castro, who investigated the case, said eyeglass frame companies do not have records of receiving the merchandise Dultz claimed she returned.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Bershin said he has no proof that Dultz sold the missing frames, but added: “What else would she have done with them?”

Dultz was arrested in December after police found 14 eyeglass frames in boxes addressed to the Facey Medical Center in the garage of the home she rented.