Prosecutor Calls Tom Ely ‘Greedy’ : Courts: His lawyer says the college district trustee acted on administrators’ advice. The case is scheduled to go to the jury today.

Trustee James T. (Tom) Ely was an “arrogant and greedy” man who stole from the public to reward himself with flagrant perks, a prosecutor said Wednesday during closing arguments in the fraud and embezzlement trial of Ely and his wife, Ingrid.

“The taxpayers just got ripped off,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol J. Nelson said.

“His attitude was, ‘It’s none of your business what I did with that money.’ Because he’s Tom Ely, everyone was just supposed to give it to him.”

Tom and Ingrid Ely are accused of conspiring to steal more than $15,000 from the Ventura County Community College District by padding expense accounts between April, 1988, and January, 1990.

The jury is expected to begin deliberations today.

The Elys’ attorneys, in their closing arguments, depicted the pair as hard workers who set out to improve the district, not to bilk it.

Tom Ely’s attorney, James M. Farley, told the jury that the trustee acted on the advice of administrators in the district. He wasn’t an “arrogant big shot” who was in it for himself, Farley said.

If anything, the attorney argued, Ely was a “sucker”--used and led astray by district officials who were trying to curry favor.

“They said, ‘Don’t irritate the trustees. We need three votes on the board to get what we want,’ ” Farley said. “They said, “Let’s play these elected officials like a musical instrument. We need these suckers . . . so we can get what we want.’ ”

As a result, Farley said, when Ely requested a bill for his expenses, he never received one. When the trustee asked if his expense accounts were incorrect, he never received a response, Farley said.

Farley argued that Ely was a victim of the “malfeasance of people in the district office.”

“The rot that lies in the administrative staff should be weeded out,” Farley said.

Ingrid Ely’s attorney, Willard P. Wiksell, told the jury that there is no evidence that she committed a crime. Ingrid Ely is accused of accepting more than $3,000 in travel advances from Moorpark College, where she was the president of the alumni association, although her expenses were charged on her husband’s district credit card.

“We have a paperwork nightmare here,” Wiksell said of about 200 trial exhibits, including expense reports and internal memos.

But Wiksell said the documents and testimony in the five-week trial failed to show that Ingrid Ely conspired to steal.

“Can you imagine Ingrid saying to Tom, ‘Let’s go for the big score, let’s get them for an airline ticket?’ ” Wiksell said. “There’s no evidence of that.”

During her closing argument, Nelson said the couple should have known better than to spend the public money for personal use, especially since Tom Ely helped draft the district policy on expenditures.

Ely has admitted on the stand that he used his district credit card to purchase $290 worth of sweaters in Canada and for $300 in clothes and other items in Denver. He said he paid the money back.

But Nelson told the jury that it doesn’t matter. “It’s still embezzlement,” she said.

Nelson also said Tom Ely inflated mileage claims and double-billed the district for meals and travel.

The worst part about it, the prosecutor said, was that there was no one to stop him.

“He has no supervisor, no boss,” Nelson said. “He and only he is responsible for how he spends the public’s money. The trustees are their own watchdogs.

“If you can’t trust the trustee, who can you trust?” she said.

Nelson also argued that Ely should not be excused just because district officials may have failed to question him about his expenses.

“They may have done wrong by not being more vigilant,” Nelson said. “They were just trying to get their jobs done. That’s not true of the defendant.”

Tom Ely has been charged with 29 counts of conspiracy, embezzlement and fraud. His wife has been charged with one count each of conspiracy, grand theft and embezzlement.