Ex-Official at County Museum Denies Embezzling $2 Million : Crime: The former deputy director and two aides are charged with stealing from the financially strapped Museum of Natural History. All three remain in jail.

The former second-in-command of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History entered a plea of not guilty Monday to charges that he embezzled more than $2 million from the museum and its fund-raising arm during the same period that the deficit-plagued county government was laying off dozens of museum employees.

Museum Deputy Director Marcus A. Rodriguez and co-defendants Cristina Elizabeth Coleman, his former secretary, and Marissa Meroney, the former chief accountant for the Museum of Natural History Foundation, were ordered back into court Aug. 9 to have a date set for their preliminary hearings on grand theft, money laundering and conspiracy charges.

All three defendants remained in custody after Municipal Judge Craig E. Veals rejected bail reduction requests by attorneys for Meroney, whose bail is set at $600,000, and for Coleman, set at $50,000. At the brief arraignment proceeding, Rodriguez’s attorney, Alan H. Yahr, withdrew a request that his client’s bail be reduced from a current figure of $2 million.

Prosecutors charge that while the 81-year-old museum was limping by with a skeleton staff, Rodriguez was laundering gate receipts and other funds and then using the money to buy cars, phones and football tickets and placing hundreds of thousands of dollars into private investment accounts.

The scam, they said, was rather simple.

Rodriguez, who helped oversee the finances of the museum and foundation and served as the county’s administrator of the La Brea Tar Pits, allegedly funneled county funds, gate receipts and private donations into a pair of museum bank accounts he controlled at Wells Fargo and Bank of America.

Rodriguez, who at the time legally earned $151,300 a year from the museum and foundation, then made cash withdrawals from the accounts and directed large amounts into private investment accounts controlled by him and Meroney.

In January, 1993, the museum slashed 47 positions, a staff reduction of nearly 33%. During the six preceding months, Rodriguez had deposited $423,000 he allegedly embezzled into a joint Shearson Lehman investment account controlled by him and Meroney.

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Prosecutors were alerted to financial irregularities after the museum’s new administrators ordered a consolidation of the financial accounts of the museum and the foundation last year. Before the appointment of current Executive Director James Powell, the museum had suffered through a lengthy period of administrative turmoil and budgetary constraints.

A 1993 county audit raised questions about the manner in which the layoffs were undertaken and the manner in which county workers were employed to remodel the former director’s home.

At the time, Rodriguez told The Times that the tone of the report would hurt the museum. “The inference in the writing [is] that there’s something wrong--they [the investigators] just couldn’t find it,” he said.

If convicted, Rodriguez, 53, of Glendale, faces a maximum 12-year prison term. Meroney, 41, of Chino Hills, and Coleman, 41, of Van Nuys, each face maximum three-year prison sentences.

While Rodriguez’s attorney had no comment Monday, lawyers for his co-defendants sought to minimize their clients’ roles in the scandal.

“There’s no allegation in the complaint of straight-out theft [by my client],” said Philip A. Toomey, who is representing Coleman. “This could be more a case of assisting than actual taking.”

Gustavo A. Barcena, attorney for Meroney, said it “appears that she was a pawn in this matter. . . . She was a very trusting and gullible employee.

“It appears Mr. Rodriguez was the real culprit,” the lawyer said.