Former Head of Irvine Charity Found Guilty : Courts: Prosecutors say forgery and embezzlement netted him more than $400,000 from funds for the homeless.

The former director of an Irvine charity was found guilty of forgery and embezzlement Monday in a scheme that prosecutors said netted him more than $400,000 in funds intended to help the homeless.

Clyde E. Weinman, 44, received a quick pat on the back from his attorney after the clerk read the verdicts, and he appeared somewhat shocked and bewildered as he was led away in handcuffs to await his sentence.

Weinman, former director of Irvine Temporary Housing, is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 4. He faces a maximum of eight years in prison and $200,000 in fines for his conviction on 13 felony charges of forgery and grand theft. The jury started deliberating last Thursday.

“I think it’s well-deserved,” said Margie Wakeham, the ITH administrator who first reported possible wrongdoing by Weinman in 1992 and later succeeded him at the agency.

But Wakeham said it was difficult to see a former colleague go to jail. “There’s certainly mixed feelings when you see someone taken off to jail that you thought you knew,” she said.

During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Weinman as a reverse Robin Hood who stole money from the poor to bankroll a posh lifestyle that included fancy cars and a luxury home. Weinman’s Lake Forest home was a virtual “Taj Mahal,” replete with lavish landscaping, pool and sauna, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Overtoom said.

Weinman also embezzled money to pay his utility bills, lease a Mercedes-Benz and carry plenty of spending money, Overtoom said.

“When you have 588 checks totaling over $400,000 with forged signatures . . . the evidence is pretty overwhelming,” Overtoom said Monday after the verdict. “They had several thousands of pieces of paper all pointing to Mr. Weinman,” he said.

Jury member William Villafana of Tustin agreed.

“He used the money for his own benefit,” Villafana said. “Even though he put some (money into the charity), he took a lot more out.”

Weinman has defended himself by saying he was a “scapegoat” for the mismanaged charity, and he insisted that he pumped $65,000 of his own money--including his wife’s teaching checks and money from his two children’s savings accounts--into the agency.

Defense attorney Milton Kerlan Jr. said Irvine Temporary Housing, a nonprofit agency founded in 1985 to provide shelter for the homeless, was chronically underfunded by at least $100,000 per year. Weinman got into trouble when he took $60,000 out of the charity to pay for his modest living expenses, Kerlan said.

But Overtoom said Weinman, hired as ITC’s executive director in 1989, must be blamed for any management problems. “There certainly was mismanagement, and it was Mr. Weinman,” Overtoom said.

Weinman was fired from the charity in June, 1992, after the agency’s board of directors found that several thousand dollars in charity money was missing.