Jennifer Beeman ran a UC Davis program to prevent violence on campus.

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Former UCD official pleads no contest to embezzling charge

Published: Friday, Apr. 15, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 3B
Last Modified: Sunday, Apr. 17, 2011 - 12:30 pm

The former head of anti-violence efforts at the University of California, Davis, pleaded no contest Thursday to two felony charges of embezzlement and falsifying accounts.

Jennifer Beeman, the veteran director of UC Davis' Campus Violence Prevention Program, entered a plea agreement with prosecutors in which seven other felony charges were dismissed.

She appeared at a hearing Thursday in Yolo Superior Court, in which she entered pleas before Judge Janet Gaard.

Beeman, who has remained free on bail, will likely face a sentence of probation when she goes before a judge June 2, Michael Cabral, Yolo County's assistant chief deputy district attorney, said Thursday.

She will also have to pay restitution of about $10,525 – the amount she is suspected of embezzling, he said.

Beeman has no prior convictions, the District Attorney's Office said.

"We believe it's a fair and appropriate disposition based on the amount of loss," Cabral said.

Beeman left the courthouse without comment.

Beeman, 53, has been the subject of campus probes for allegedly inflating crime statistics on federal grant applications and misappropriating money for personal uses.

She was arrested Dec. 10 and charged with nine felonies related to her alleged misuse of funds from educational and outreach programs meant to prevent sexual violence, the university said in a news release.

UC Davis police contended Beeman embezzled thousands of dollars by asking for travel reimbursements and mileage to attend meetings that never took place.

The university returned more than $100,000 to the U.S. Justice Department after finding that unallowable expenses were charged to a violence prevention grant Beeman administered, officials said.

Beeman spent 16 years at the university before retiring in June 2009.

In September 2009, UC Davis announced Beeman had inflated the number of forcible sex offenses that took place on campus in 2005, 2006 and 2007 in reports required by federal law.

The university revised the figures in 2009, reducing by more than half the number of incidents reported for each year.

UC Davis' crime reporting had come into question before. A Bee story in 2001 reported that Beeman had written a grant application in 1999 stating that as many as 700 students at UC Davis were victims of rape or attempted rape each year.

At the same time, the university's reports to the federal government said assaults on campus were practically nonexistent.

The criminal charges against Beeman stem from her handling of program funds, not from her alleged misreporting of crime statistics.

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Call The Bee's Hudson Sangree, (916) 321-1191.

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