Professor at UCLA Charged With Theft of Conference Funds

UCLA physiology professor Michael H. Chase surrendered to authorities Wednesday to face charges that he embezzled at least $735,000 in public funds as a member of UCLA medical school’s Brain Research Institute, according to prosecutors and court papers.

Chase is accused of receiving the payments over at least seven years from his live-in girlfriend and his sister, both of whom he hired to set up academic conferences on the effects of drugs and alcohol on driving, court documents show.

Chase, 62, who has been on the UCLA medical school faculty since 1969, was arrested Wednesday and released on his own recognizance. He is scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 17 on two charges of grand theft, which carry a penalty of as much as six years in prison.

Defense attorney Charles C. Wehner called the charges erroneous.

“The D.A. has taken an administrative dispute with the university that is based on arcane university guidelines and now caused it to be charged as a criminal violation,” Wehner said. “All charges will be successfully defended.”

The criminal charges stem from a UCLA investigation launched in 1996, when campus auditors raised questions about hefty contracts awarded to two companies, one owned by Chase’s former girlfriend, Barbara Gibson, the other by his sister, Judy Franzblau. Auditors worried about a conflict of interest.

Between 1987 and 1996, the universities paid out about $1.78 million to Gibson and Franzblau for conferences organized by Chase to bring together experts to present papers about drinking, drugs and driving.

The symposiums were financed by the Anheuser-Busch Charitable Foundation. Annual grants were made to the university and then passed on to Chase’s contractors to pay for experts’ travel expenses, honorariums, banquets, printing fees and other costs.

The former girlfriend told investigators that she gave some of the money from each contract to Chase, according to an affidavit by investigators. “Gibson recalled one check was for approximately $50,000,” the papers said.

When she and Chase had a falling out, his sister took over the contract to run the conferences, said Richard A. Lowenstein, a deputy district attorney. Investigators traced hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing fraudulently from the sister’s accounts to those controlled by her brother, Lowenstein said.

The university filed a lawsuit against Chase to recover the money. The case was settled last March, when Chase agreed to repay the university $750,000.

UC police attempted to put together a criminal case, but the district attorney’s office two years ago declined to file criminal charges, citing insufficient evidence.

The district attorney’s own investigators later cobbled together the complicated case based on records seized with a search warrant from Chase’s home, his stockbroker’s office, his offices at UCLA’s medical school and an off-campus organization he runs in Westwood called the Brain Information Service.

Chase could not be reached for comment. But defense attorney Wehner said the entire case is misguided. He said his client was entitled to be paid for organizing as many as six conferences a year.

“It was all legitimate and Dr. Chase was appropriately paid for work he properly did,” Wehner said. He denied that Chase created any conflict of interest by arranging for his girlfriend and sister to handle the conferences.

“The university knew the relationships,” Wehner said. “His girlfriend was a symposia organizer before he ever knew her. His sister was a travel organizer and symposia organizer. She continues in the business.”

Chase, a well-regarded researcher, received the Sleep Research Society Distinguished Scientist Award in 1999 for his body of scientific work. He is not teaching this semester, but is scheduled to teach a class this winter.

As a tenured professor, he has lifetime job protections unless his colleagues in the Academic Senate take the rare step of trying to oust him for any violations of the Faculty Code of Conduct. University officials decline to say if any such proceedings are underway against Chase.