Prosecutors Conclude Case in Alleged Embezzlement : Courts: Former executive director of Irvine Temporary Housing is charged with forging checks and grand theft.

Prosecutors concluded their case Monday against a former director of an Irvine charity who is accused of embezzling $400,000. The defense prepared to argue that the director put as much money into the charity as he took out.

Clyde E. Weinman, 44, former executive director of Irvine Temporary Housing, is charged with forging more than 500 checks and grand theft. He could face a maximum sentence of eight years in prison and $200,000 in fines if found guilty on all 13 felony counts, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Overtoom.

Weinman pleaded not guilty to the charges and began his defense Monday in Superior Court.

“You don’t go bankrupt, have your house foreclosed and two vehicles repossessed if you’re absconding with money,” Weinman said outside of court. His attorney said he will show that Weinman poured about $65,000 of his own money into the agency to keep it afloat and took about $60,000 out.

Weinman was fired from Irvine Temporary Housing in June, 1992, when the agency’s board of directors discovered that several thousand dollars were missing. He was arrested in November, 1992, and his case came to trial last week.

Weinman had held the $30,000-a-year job since December, 1989.

Irvine Temporary Housing was created in 1985 to find shelter for the homeless in the Irvine area.

Overtoom said that Weinman forged the names of the board of directors and made checks payable to himself or to companies to which he owed money.

Overtoom also called Weinman’s Lake Forest home a “Taj Mahal,” with landscaping, a pool and sauna, and said the home improvements were done while Weinman was director of the agency.

Weinman’s attorney, Milton Kerlan Jr., attempted to portray Irvine Temporary Housing as a mismanaged organization that was constantly in the red, saying the agency was underfunded by at least $100,000 per year.

Superior Court Judge Jean Rheinheimer said she thought it was clear that the agency was run “very shoddily,” but that was not the issue.

Outside the courtroom, Kerlan said his strategy in the coming days will be to show that Weinman was using his own money to keep the agency financially viable.

“Forgery involves the specific intent to defraud,” Kerlan said. “The only thing (Weinman has) been trying to do is keep a significantly underfunded program afloat.”

He conceded, however, that Weinman used “unconventional methods” to accomplish his ends.

“He put himself short by putting his own funds into the program,” Kerlan said. He added that Weinman made no attempt to hide the fact that he wrote checks to himself and cashed them. “He had to take some money out, because he couldn’t live without it.”

In response to charges that he used charity money to remodel his house, Weinman said that he worked as a contractor and painter in addition to his position at the agency, that his wife also worked, and that he had inherited money from his parents. Weinman also said he did all of the renovations on his house himself.

Judith Wright, former program director of Irvine Temporary Housing, testified Monday that Weinman was dedicated to helping the poor and personally worked to fix the condominiums where the organization’s clients lived.

“I often saw him go in his own pocket and give people gas money if we didn’t have it,” Wright said.

Weinman said he “borrowed money from friends to feed my children.”

The defense will continue to present its case today and the jury will begin to deliberate next week at the earliest.