Newport Beach Official Is Sentenced to 4 Years : Embezzlement: Robert Dixon is also ordered to pay restitution for taking $1.8 million as utilities director.

A Superior Court judge Friday sentenced a former utilities director of Newport Beach to four years in prison for embezzling more than $1.8 million from the city to help finance what his attorney called an opulent “fantasy life.”

Speaking out for the first time since he was arrested in January, Robert J. Dixon, 48, claimed full responsibility for the embezzlement and said he is “ashamed” of his action.

“Every day, the knowledge of what I’ve done . . . has grown overwhelmingly,” Dixon said in a trembling voice. “Nothing in my life was finer than working for (the people of Newport Beach). They gave me so much; I took all that, and I destroyed it.”

After listening to Dixon’s mea culpa, Judge John J. Ryan ordered the 48-year-old defendant to pay restitution and sentenced him to four years in prison for one count of embezzlement by a public official and a sentencing enhancement of stealing more than $100,000.

Ryan also ordered that Dixon serve a two-year concurrent sentence stemming from a second embezzlement count. With the time he has already served in jail, along with expected good-time credit, Dixon could be eligible for parole within two years.

In denying Dixon probation, Ryan said he has “serious doubts” that Dixon can reform himself any time soon.

“If you put him around money, there’s no saying what will happen,” the judge said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig McKinnon argued for a maximum seven-year sentence, saying: “The real tragedy of this case is the loss of confidence and trust that the public has with the government.”

The prosecutor also said that Dixon, a city employee for 17 years, had a “dark and sinister side” that helped weave the “sophisticated” scheme that went undetected for 10 years. He said that on two occasions in 1990, Dixon’s colleagues approached him with their beliefs that some city money was being misappropriated. Instead of admitting guilt then, McKinnon said, Dixon smoothly told them that he would personally look into the situation.

Furthermore, McKinnon told the judge, Dixon did not immediately tell detectives how much he had embezzled. Instead, he waited to see what their investigation would turn up.

“What you have here is a pattern where Mr. Dixon will only admit to what he knows can be used against him,” McKinnon said.

In his 45-minute plea to Ryan for a lenient sentence, Dixon’s attorney, Stephan A. DeSales, pointed out that Dixon showed remorse from the start by admitting to the theft, waiving a preliminary hearing and pleading guilty as charged in April.

Dixon’s methodology was simple and almost clumsily cobbled together, DeSales said, which shows that the defendant did not set out to hatch a sophisticated scheme, as the prosecutor contended.

DeSales also painted a portrait of an anguished and troubled man who suffered from a compulsive disorder that caused him to crave a profligate lifestyle. Dixon used the money, his attorney said, to “create a fantasy life.”

A psychologist who evaluated Dixon stated in his report that Dixon suffered from a “serious feeling of inadequacies,” and he found “something that helped him avoid his gloomy, dysphoric feelings: money.”

Dixon confessed to taking money from the city’s coffers since 1982 and using it to pay for his extensive art collection, jewelry, stocks, 1990 BMW, Huntington Beach condominium and lavish trips abroad.

His friends described him as a connoisseur of the arts, who established an especially close relationship with the New York-based American Ballet Theatre, donating thousands of dollars to the company and even serving for a time on its board of directors.

Dixon told detectives that he donated about $20,000 yearly to various organizations. He also bought expensive gifts for friends and co-workers, according to court documents.

He was a generous man, according to a pre-sentencing report, but “generous with money that was not his.”

At home, he collected black-and-white photographs--with a value estimated at $400,000--focusing in particular on art photos from the 1920s and ‘30s. The walls of his trilevel Huntington Beach condominium were dominated by framed prints. His art collection was so vast--police seized more than 220 photographs from his home--that Dixon put some waterscapes on the walls of the city Utilities Department.

His colleagues thought his expensive habits merely reflected a well-to-do background. That impression stayed until Dixon’s Jan. 13 arrest, which jolted his department and left his friends and peers reeling.

“For a long time, in the day-to-day activities, it has been like working in a shadow,” Jeff Staneart, who took Dixon’s place as acting utilities director of the 50-member department, said Friday. “The memory of what’s happened and the results of what happened will be with everyone that he worked with for a long, long time.”

The scheme Dixon used involved submitting phony purchase orders to the city Finance Department for fictitious water and oil easement services. When a check was cut, Dixon collected it, forged a signature and deposited the money in his own accounts. The scam unraveled when a credit card company discovered a series of city checks in one of his credit accounts.

Immediately after his arrest, city officials filed a lawsuit seeking to recoup some of the loss. In a court stipulation, Dixon agreed to deed to the city all of his assets.

Many of his possessions were sold recently in public auctions, netting about $200,000. Dixon has also signed over to the city his last paycheck, a deferred compensation payment and retirement pension, totaling more than $100,000, said Newport Beach City Atty. Robert Burnham. Dixon’s condominium is expected to net about $90,000.

How Dixon will pay the city for the difference between the value of the liquidated assets and the $1.82-million loss is still being discussed, Burnham said.

Until his arrest, Dixon had a sterling reputation with city officials. In fact, his pre-sentencing report revealed that about the time the scandal broke, he was waiting for “appointment to his already-secured promotion to city manager.”

His illustrious career with Newport Beach began in 1975, when he was hired to work in a city warehouse. In 1981, he was transferred to the Utilities Department, where he rose through the ranks. He was promoted director of the department in 1988.

Former City Manager Robert L. Wynn said he hired and promoted Dixon through the years, even though he knew Dixon had been convicted for embezzlement in the past.

In 1972, Dixon was charged with stealing more than $80,000 from Georgetown University in Washington, where he served as student activity director. He pleaded guilty that same year to two counts of embezzlement and received five years’ probation. He was also ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment, which ended a year later when he moved to Orange County.

As he told Newport Beach police detectives shortly after his arrest, his second chance and new career gave him everything. Why he did what he did was still a puzzle to himself, he said.

“Obviously, I wanted to do it, and I think I enjoyed it,” he told the detectives.