Ex-Ivy Official Is Guilty of Embezzlement

A Princeton University official pleaded guilty last week to charges of embezzling $127,500 from the school over a 10 year period.

David A. Probst former director of corporate relations at Princeton admitted that he falsified travel vouchers for the separate holding companies which oversaw the university's petroleum and real estate interests Princeton's General Counsel Thomas H. Wright said Monday.

The infractions which included charging a Caribbean family trip to the university were discovered during an auditing of travel receipts according to the Daily Princetonian.

After the crimes were uncovered in October 1981. Probst was tired and the two holding companies were dissolved Probst settled the case with the university in a private civil suit and returned the money to Princeton in installments this year but the Mercer County district attorney's office decided to prosecute Probst criminally.

Probst is scheduled for sentencing in July and could face a penalty of up to five years and $7500.

Both Probst who is now retired and his attorney William Robertson refused to comment, but his wife Jeanne W. Probst said. "There have been so many lies in the papers." She added "Nobody really knows the truth." She refused further comment.

Harvard's General Counsel Daniel Steiner said everything at Harvard is subject to systematic auditing, both internally and by outside agencies. He added that Harvard does not hold corporations similar to those which Probst controlled at Princeton. Although Steiner could not recall a similar scandal here, he said that such incidents are conceivable in operations as large as Princeton and Harvard.