Temple Theft Reveals a Gambler’s Sad Saga

For two days, Doina Stanescu exchanged haunting phone messages with a Redondo Beach police detective.

She set the rules in her first message to Det. Rick Kochheim: They would communicate only by voice mail. She would not reveal where she was hiding.

The calls were grim. Kochheim said Stanescu, a bookkeeper, suggested that she might surrender but “only if she failed to take her own life.”

But she did turn herself in Jan. 22 and now sits in jail, facing charges of embezzling nearly $100,000 from Temple Menorah in Redondo Beach.

Public records and interviews with police and Stanescu’s former co-workers paint a picture of a woman who optimistically arrived in the United States with her husband, Marin, from Romania more than three decades ago.

Stanescu could not be reached for comment, and her attorney, Deputy Public Defender John Gorelli, declined to speak about the case.

But Stanescu’s life entered a more desperate period after a 1989 divorce, a time that was marked by continuing financial troubles.

During the divorce process, she failed to reply to court requests for financial information that would have been used to assess potential alimony.

Because she didn’t respond, documents show, no alimony was ordered.

It was during this time, Stanescu would tell temple co-workers years later, that she began making steady trips to gamble in Las Vegas.

By 1991, she had filed for bankruptcy. Court records listed assets of $2,600 and liabilities totaling $25,407. By 1995, however, she was still in trouble, unable to pay $645 of her state taxes.

When Stanescu became the temple’s bookkeeper about a year and a half ago, nobody there knew of her financial troubles.

Co-workers said Stanescu, 51, appeared extremely able and authoritative at her work. On a personal level, she was friendly, if a little bit moody, and a heavy smoker.

Not long after she started working at the synagogue, prosecutors said, Stanescu went to the temple’s computer and printed checks made in her own name, forging the signatures of her supervisors.

Coincidentally, some temple members had been questioning how the synagogue managed its finances in recent years. Ron Maroko, a former temple board member, said he had complained for years that the books had not been audited. He said he resigned from the board last summer to protest the lack of an audit, which he said hadn’t been conducted since 1996.

“This all could have been avoided if the temple had audited its books,” Kochheim said.

Request to See the Books Rebuffed

Maroko said he asked to see the books in October but was told by Stanescu that some records still had to be compiled. He later made an appointment to see the books but said Stanescu called in sick that day so the meeting was postponed.

Maroko made another appointment, this time for Jan. 18, the day Stanescu didn’t show up for work and left phone messages for staffers saying she wasn’t coming back.

A letter arrived at the synagogue the next day, police and temple staffers said, in which Stanescu admitted embezzling nearly $100,000.

Stanescu talked about her addiction to gambling and her father’s ailing health and rising medical expenses in Romania. She said she was “so overcome with guilt that she couldn’t live anymore,” according to Kochheim.

“I have no way of verifying her story about the father,” he added.

Because of the suicide threat, police went to Stanescu’s Long Beach apartment. She wasn’t there.

Police said she later called the temple to set a time to turn herself in. When she failed to show up, Kochheim called her cell phone and left messages urging her to surrender.

Stanescu called back, he said, and set out the rules for the exchanges that would follow. He called three times; she called back twice, finally agreeing to turn herself in.

It ended Jan. 22 when friends dropped her off at the Redondo Beach police station and she began to tearfully face four counts of forgery--since police say she signed at least four checks to herself--and a count each of embezzlement and grand theft, all felonies.

She has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is being held at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility north of downtown Los Angeles in lieu of $125,000 bail.

Throughout the time she discussed suicide or surrender through phone messages with the detective, she continued to gamble all the money she had left, losing everything, Kochheim said.

Meanwhile, the synagogue is facing a $50,000 budget shortfall, according to a letter to the congregation from President Margy Feldman.

Some temple members, like Maroko, also wonder whether regular audits might have prevented any problems.

Anger at Leadership of Temple Reported

“I’ve talked to a lot of congregation members since the embezzlement, and many are upset and angry at the leadership of Temple Menorah,” said Eliot Krieger, a member of the congregation.

“You know, the focus of the conversations I’ve had has not been about [Stanescu], but has been about the atmosphere created by the leadership that allowed her to embezzle the money,” he said.

Feldman acknowledges the controversy but would not discuss the issue further during an interview.

“I’m very protective of my congregation and professional staff,” she said. “It’s all of us who are responsible for this. That’s the stand I’m taking.”

Feldman said that a healing service is being planned to help temple members come to terms with the recent events but that no date has been set.

“I feel worried and sad for [Stanescu],” she said. “Yeah, I guess I forgive Doina.”