Prison Terms for Workers in Welfare Fraud : Courts: Two county employees draw 6- and 7-year sentences for scheme that cost taxpayers as much as $1 million.

Two county employees who masterminded the largest welfare fraud in the history of San Diego County--a scheme that cost taxpayers as much as $1 million--were sentenced Thursday to state prison.

The two former welfare department employees received six- and seven-year sentences from a judge who said their greed caused them to violate the public trust. Five co-defendants also were sentenced.

Victoria Clarissa Aguirre, 40, of Chula Vista and Angela M. Nieto, 48, of El Cajon pleaded guilty in June to charges of misappropriating public funds. Both women worked in the Income Maintenance Bureau of the county’s Department of Social Services, the agency that administers welfare programs.

Aguirre and Nieto organized a group of 20 people, mostly family members and friends who did not work for the government, who skimmed money from the welfare system through phony accounts. The fraud took place from October, 1986, through early 1990 and was made possible by an easily manipulated computer system. According to Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert L. Boles, Aguirre and Nieto developed a way to send government checks to friends and relatives by creating bogus welfare case files.

Municipal Judge Nicholas Kasimatis, who has administered the complicated case for almost one year, ordered Aguirre to spend seven years in state prison and to repay $10,000 to the county--the maximum restitution allowed under the law.

Noting the documented loss of $533,000--an amount that the judge said could be as high as $1 million if more paperwork was available to prosecutors--Kasimatis lambasted Aguirre and the others involved in the scheme for using the county system as a personal bank.

“Absolute, blatant greed. . . . There’s no other way to describe this,” Kasimatis said of the scam.

Referring to such scandals as Iran-Contra, Watergate and the schemes operated by white-collar criminals Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, the judge said Aguirre “demonstrated she’s a thief, she violated the public trust in a very gross way.”

Boles called Aguirre “the leader of the pack--the person who recruited the people, who got the kickbacks.”

Nieto was ordered to spend six years in prison and to pay $10,000 to the county.

Although Nieto gave a tearful apology that stressed the “shame” she has experienced for her crimes, Kasimatis was not moved. “The violation of trust you have committed I’m sure has an effect on you, but it has a larger effect on the people of this community,” he told her.

“You took advantage of your position of trust so you could benefit. That’s called greed,” the judge said.

Five others were sentenced Thursday:

* Sandra Gray received checks totaling at least $99,000. The 39-year-old Chula Vista woman, who also worked for the county, was sent to state prison for four years.

* Christiana Lieras, a friend of Gray’s, was sentenced to three years probation and 25 days of public service. Lieras, 24, of Chula Vista was ordered to repay $6,491.

* David Tovar, 27, of San Diego, a former Department of Social Services employee, was ordered to spend one year in custody and five years on probation, and to pay restitution of $10,000.

* Jose Martinez, who was dating Nieto at the time of the fraud, will spend four months in a work furlough facility and will be on probation for four years. The 31-year-old El Cajon man was ordered to repay $5,080.

* Rojean Rittmiller, whose assistance helped prosecutors persuade others in the fraud to plead guilty, was placed on probation for five years and ordered to perform 200 hours of volunteer work. The 36-year-old from Chino Hills also was ordered to pay $8,204 restitution.

Five others in the case had already been sentenced. One other defendant will appear before Kasimatis Monday to hear his sentence, and the seven remaining defendants will be sentenced Sept. 18.

Boles said the case dwarfs all other welfare frauds in the county. Previously, the largest scheme involved a fraud of $40,000.