The former finance director of a private Huntington Beach elementary school was sentenced Thursday to nearly 3 1/2 years behind bars for embezzling more than $2 million to pay for Angels season tickets, vacations to Europe, golf club memberships and other personal expenses.
Ricardo Nieva, 49, of Trabuco Canyon was ordered to serve 41 months in federal prison, pay restitution of about $2 million to Pegasus School, and serve three years of supervised release after he gets out of prison.
“He could’ve destroyed the school completely,” Mike Smith, vice chairman of the school’s board of trustees, told the court.
“Money that could’ve been used to improve our educational program went to cars, jewelry, trips … he even paid for his own kids’ private school educations,” Smith said.
Nieva was the business manager at Pegasus School for nearly 20 years until his resignation in September 2013.
From the end of 2006 to May 2013, he cashed about 250 checks payable to himself, according to his plea agreement. Nieva also spent the school’s cash on an Arizona timeshare, mortgage payments, home improvement projects, restaurants, shopping, sports camps for his two children and college savings plans.
In a brief statement, Nieva apologized for “betraying people at the school” and hurting his own family.
U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson said he has presided over many similar fraud and theft cases.
“In the spectrum of human failings, some people just do bad things and it’s really hard to detect them,” the judge said, telling Smith that the school won “a reverse lottery” when it employed Nieva.
Pregerson said the case illustrated “the cruel reality that (some) people that have access to money do bad things and hurt other people.”
“It’s not a reflection on the school,” Pregerson said, adding that such crimes can take place at even the best-run organizations.
The judge said the long-term damage to the school “is not yet known — and it can’t be good.”
Nieva, who pleaded guilty last year to two counts of wire fraud, admitted trying to cover his tracks by altering bank statements and doctoring other records.
Pegasus School was founded in 1984 and accepts students after an assessment of the child’s potential. Its current tuition is $19,800, according to the school’s website, and enrollment is 565 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
Pregerson ordered Nieva to surrender Aug. 17 to U.S. marshals at the Santa Ana federal courthouse to begin serving his sentence.
— City News Service