Former San Bernardino County assessor led an office laden with misdeeds, report says

A scathing report released Tuesday details years of alleged crime, fraud and sordid activities inside the San Bernardino County assessor’s office, prompting the county to file suit against six former employees in an effort to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to the 30-page document, unqualified people were hired to do nothing, time cards were falsified, unauthorized political campaigning was common and former Assessor Bill Postmus was so strung out on drugs that his assistant said he “looked like he fell off a park bench.”

At one point colleagues suspected Postmus, later arrested on suspicion of possessing methamphetamine, was huffing canisters of DVD cleaner.

“People were asking, ‘What’s wrong with Bill? Is he stoned again?’ ” according to witness interviews in the report.

The investigation, done at the request of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, was compiled by former federal prosecutor John Hueston, best known for successfully pursuing Enron’s Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Hueston is now in private practice.

After reviewing the report, the board voted Tuesday to sue Postmus along with five other former employees of the assessor’s office -- James Erwin, Adam Aleman, Rex Gutierrez, Michael Richman and Gregory Eyler.

“As a taxpayer and as a public official, I find the activities detailed in the report deeply disturbing,” said board Chairman Gary Ovitt. “There is certainly enough information in this report to compel the Board of Supervisors to pursue legal action against these individuals and seek damages for the taxpayers.”

Three of those named in the suit have been arrested and are out on bail. Postmus resigned in February, shortly after being arrested on drug charges the month before. His former deputy, Aleman, has been charged with six felonies, and former assistant assessor Erwin is facing 10 felony counts, most for allegedly failing to properly report gifts received while in office.

Of those mentioned in the report, only Erwin could be reached for comment Tuesday.

“I testified before a grand jury, went to the district attorney and laid out all of this a long time ago,” Erwin said. “I tried to do something about it, and now I feel like I am being retaliated against for being a whistle-blower.”

Hueston said Postmus was elected assessor in 2006 bent on creating his own personal political machine complete with “superfluous” staff and supported by taxpayers.

He detailed how Postmus quickly expanded the executive staff from a handful of employees to about a dozen, many of whom did little actual assessor work. Some toiled on Postmus’ political campaign while others advocated for local politicians or for former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Hueston chronicled the work habits of many of Postmus’ employees. One of those, Rancho Cucamonga Councilman Gutierrez, was hired as an “intergovernmental relations officer” in 2007. The report said he was taken on largely at the request of an influential businessman.

He was nicknamed the ‘Intergalactic Officer’ around the office because of “how obscure and irrelevant” his activities were, the report said.

In another case, Postmus hired Richman as a consultant and paid him $49,200. Investigators said 90% of his work was political and unrelated to the assessor’s office.

Meanwhile, Aleman allegedly falsified the minutes of meetings to make it appear as if the top employees contributed more than they did. He also faked their time cards, saying they worked 40 hours a week when sometimes they didn’t even work 20, the investigation revealed.

“None were described by even one witness as performing important assessor-related work,” the report said.

Some hires seemed random. Postmus met the manager of a Riverside restaurant while out to eat and offered him the job of taxpayer advocate, a position in which he apparently did little and did it badly. The report said the two had a romantic relationship.

Postmus paid his friend Scott Becker $1,434 for work that included replacing the official framed portraits of himself, even though the county could have done it for free. When Hueston tried to interview Becker, the former federal prosecutor said the man left a threatening voice mail and “warned that if anyone showed up at his property he would shoot their heads off with a 12-gauge shotgun.” The matter was referred to the authorities.

Postmus’ drug use was examined in detail. Erwin and Aleman persuaded him to seek treatment, but it didn’t take. He didn’t show up for meetings and once came to work with blue and white foam around his mouth. Erwin searched his apartment and found canisters of DVD cleaner.

“Mr. Erwin associated the canisters with [Postmus’] bad breath and thought [he] was huffing the chemicals in the canisters,” the report said. “Mr. Erwin compared this to snorting glue.” Postmus admitted to having a drug problem and said he was being treated.

The report said Postmus and many of his top staff defrauded the county of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office is continuing its own probe of the assessor’s office.

Supervisor Neil Derry, who employed Erwin as his chief of staff until his arrest, said he doesn’t know whether the county will ever collect on its lawsuit.

“My goal is to get at the truth, clean it up and fix it,” he said. “This is not the end of it. I have no doubt there will be more information to come out of this process.”

--

david.kelly@latimes.com