Woman Gets 4 Years for Embezzling From UC Irvine

A woman who authorities said paid her rent, car payments and her child’s college tuition with $270,000 she embezzled from UC Irvine was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison.

As a management services officer in the medical school’s dermatology department, Linda F. Manago, 50, had the power to write checks on an account intended for tax payments, patient refunds and the salaries of the department’s doctors, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Marion.

But no one else had oversight over the account, he said, so no one spotted the payments that Manago made from 1993 to 1996 to an Arizona university and General Motors Acceptance Corp.

After Manago wrote the checks, she replaced the money by transferring funds from other UC Irvine accounts she oversaw, authorities said. But the dermatology chairman noticed irregularities in the accounts and had Manago’s check-writing privileges revoked.

Manago resigned once university auditors began looking into the matter, authorities said.

“She was discovered only after she quit and continued to write personal checks on the account,” said Denise Azimi, spokeswoman for the state Franchise Tax Board. “That’s pretty arrogant.”

Manago, a 17-year university employee, told authorities she needed the money because she had a disabled husband and a sick granddaughter, Marion said.

In addition to grand theft and misuse of public funds, Manago pleaded guilty in July to filing false state income tax returns.

A former Tustin resident, she has been in custody since her March 3 arrest at her new home in Savannah, Ga.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Margaret Anderson also ordered Manago to pay $200,000 in restitution to the UC regents; $32,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest to the state; and $19,000 to Bank of America, where the dermatology department had its accounts.