DMV Widens Its Probe of License Hearing Officer

By the time he was fired last month, the scores of cases that Michael Tarrish handled as a hearing officer for the state Department of Motor Vehicles had become one big blur. During hours of interrogation by department investigators, Tarrish could not remember the names of all the errant drivers he had put back on the road. But he did recall in detail the lunch tabs picked up by their attorneys, the hundred dollar bills passed to him in matchbooks, and the woman who entertained him in the back of his camper truck.

With those recollections and Tarrish’s outright admission that he took money and sex from people who appeared before him, authorities are building a criminal case against the 20-year veteran of the DMV. The investigation began after officials received a complaint about Tarrish’s behavior.

DMV investigators presented the case to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office last month, but no charges have yet been filed.

Authorities now are broadening their inquiry to include the circle of attorneys and motorists with whom Tarrish had relationships.

“I expect that we will be filing a charge of some sort against Tarrish, perhaps as early as (this) week,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Healey. “We’re continuing to investigate the allegations against the various attorneys that he (Tarrish) has named. I don’t know what the upshot of that will be.”

Six lawyers whose cases Tarrish said he handled last year have been contacted in recent weeks by DMV investigators. Those who were willing to discuss the investigation with The Times denied any wrongdoing.

At the home of Huntington Beach attorney Randall Edgar Fine, investigators on Jan. 23 seized a $130 check that Fine had written to Tarrish last May, Fine’s attorney told The Times. The attorney said the money was a loan that Tarrish never repaid.

Tarrish agreed with that account, and recalled that Fine brought “four or five” cases to him for rulings in 1986.

Among the cases was one involving Fine’s sister-in-law, a school bus driver in Riverside County. According to a California Highway Patrol accident report, Rita Fine was cited in December, 1985, for failing to yield the right of way while driving her bus, causing a collision that left a 22-year-old motorcyclist a paraplegic.

Faced with the loss of her bus operating certificate, Rita Fine traveled from her Mira Loma home in January, 1986, to Tarrish’s Long Beach office, where the hearing officer ruled in her favor.

Rita Fine declined to discuss her case in detail, but said that it was her brother-in-law who advised her to go to the DMV office in Long Beach--more than 50 miles from her home.

It is not yet known what impact Tarrish’s rulings have had on the driving public. DMV investigators are examining more than 150 cases that Tarrish decided during the last two years in an attempt to determine how many of his rulings were questionable. DMV officials refused The Times’ request to review the records.

It is clear, however, that Tarrish was constantly short of cash. A paunchy, balding, elf of a man, Tarrish, 47, craved the attention of women and was desperate for money to attract them.

Equally desperate were the drunk drivers, inveterate speeders and other reckless motorists who paraded through Tarrish’s hearing room in the hopes of holding onto their licenses.

One motorist whom Tarrish remembers is Mary Anderson, 34, who had chalked up four accidents and nine tickets--mostly for speeding--during a two-year period. Last October, Anderson faced the loss of her license for violating the probation Tarrish had granted her 10 months earlier.

”. . . He’d given me his card and said if I ever needed any help, ‘Give me a call,’ ” Anderson told The Times. “I knew the guy liked me, he was attracted to me, and I could probably talk a deal with him.”

Anderson said she called Tarrish and they met twice. At the second meeting, she said, she finally asked him: “‘What exactly do you want me to do to keep my license?’ And he said, ‘Not much. I just want you to come inside my camper with me.’ ”

Anderson acknowledged entering the camper and opening her blouse.

Tarrish recalled that he set aside Anderson’s suspension and wrote in the department log book that a hearing on her case was not held.

“I guess I set aside a suspension in return for sexual favors,” Tarrish told The Times.

Under DMV rules, Tarrish’s decision in this case, as well as most others, were not subject to review by any higher authority. The hearing officers have the final say in all informal hearings, which constitute about 90% of their workload. Their decisions are reviewed only when a motorist requests a formal hearing, in which witnesses are sworn and testimony is recorded by a stenographer.

Santa Monica attorney William L. Streitfeld, one of the lawyers interviewed by the DMV in connection with Tarrish case, testified about Tarrish and the DMV hearing system last October during a court case involving a former client.

An advantage of the informal hearing, Streitfeld testified, is that the hearing officer “has more control and less people looking over his shoulder, and in an informal hearing I can get away with more.

“That is,” Streitfeld continued, “you can go in there and you can be looser, more casual . . . and no formal record is kept. . . .

“Furthermore, I don’t have to go through Sacramento to get a (hearing) location; I can pick a location and sometimes I can pick a judge.”

Streitfeld testified that he selected Tarrish because he found Tarrish “extremely lenient on driving license cases not involving alcohol or lack of insurance.”

In a recent interview with The Times, Streitfeld said: “The system says we can schedule hearings by telephone anywhere we want. As long as the system says we can do that, and I know there’s a judge who’s going to be on the lenient side, I’m crazy not to use him.”

Streitfeld said he tried very hard to get along with Tarrish because “it’s so hard to get a good ruling from anybody at the DMV.”

But last spring, Streitfeld recalled, Tarrish started asking him for money. By summer, Tarrish had become brazen. On July 9, Streitfeld said, Tarrish summoned him into the hearing room and set a price for a favorable decision on a case he was about to hear. Streitfeld recalled:

“He called me into the room and deliberately and bluntly asked me . . . ‘Would your guy, your client like to have (his) license back?’ I said, ‘I’m sure he would.’ And then he said, ‘I need $700 or $750.’ And I said, ‘I’m tap city,’ ” meaning that he was out of money.

Streitfeld said he had already refused to loan money to Tarrish three times before.

“I had already told him it was unethical, and that didn’t do it,” Streitfeld said. “I had already told him, ‘Jeez, you know things are a little tight at the office right now.’ That didn’t do it. I’d been trying to get this guy off my back and still maintain relations with him.”

Streitfeld said Tarrish lost all restraint. On the half-dozen occasions last year when he saw Tarrish, Streitfeld said, “he was always broke. He had all the signs of a person who’s got a chronic problem. . . . I think he had a lady. . . .”

That was just the trouble.

“Rather severe economic difficulty” is how Tarrish put it.

Her name was Patricia, 34, a heavyset mother of five living in Compton. Tarrish, who is married and has two daughters, took Patricia as his mistress.

During their intense, six-month romance, Patricia said, Tarrish paid her rent and medical bills, purchased her furniture, took her shopping, out to dinner and on trips to the Big Bear resort. He bought her candy, flowers and silk stockings.

“He bought me everything,” Patricia said in an interview. Often he gave her cash, she said, sometimes as much as $1,000 at a time.

Tarrish and Patricia agreed that he spent about $6,000 on her during their relationship.

The double life took its toll on Tarrish. In addition to holding his $35,000-a-year post at the DMV, he was working nights as a driving instructor.

“He started having family problems,” Patricia recalled. “Every time, he would say, ‘I’m trying to keep the family happy, I’m trying to keep you happy and that’s a lot of pressure.’ ”

The relationship with Patricia ended in an ugly confrontation on Oct. 15. Patricia, who said she had threatened several times to expose Tarrish to his superiors, drove to the DMV office in Long Beach. Before she could tell her story, Tarrish called the police to report that she was driving a stolen vehicle. Patricia was arrested by Long Beach police and spent 72 hours in jail before she was released. She has not seen Tarrish since.

Patricia was not the only woman Tarrish courted.

Kandi, who described herself as a former prostitute, said she met Tarrish when she was working on Long Beach Boulevard.

Both Kandi and Patricia said that when Tarrish needed cash, as he frequently did, he would say that he had to go call his lawyer to get some money.

“He kept always saying, ‘Finances, my finances, I’m spending all this money. . . . I’m going to have to go to my lawyer,’ ” Kandi said. “He always mentioned the lawyer, go to him for money.”

Tarrish has told DMV investigators that six attorneys provided him with money, meals or other favors.

He told The Times that he did not keep track of all the money he received, but estimated that it amounted to about $2,000 during a six- to eight-month period.

Tarrish said he tried to explain to DMV investigators that most of the transactions were loans, not bribes. “I was borrowing money from these attorneys. I fully intended to pay them back,” he said.

However, in one case that Tarrish described to investigators, he characterized the money he received as a cash payment. In an interview with The Times, he referred to it as a “direct bribe.” Tarrish told investigators that the money came from Daniel Nishiyama, a Los Angeles attorney, who, accompanied by a client, appeared before Tarrish last summer.

Tarrish asserted that Nishiyama approached him in the hearing room before the case began and asked him to step outside.

“He said his client had paid him a large amount of money to represent him on a case and that he would give me $500 out of it. I reinstated his client on probation. . . . I ended up with $300, which I picked up in his office,” Tarrish told The Times.

When he went to Nishiyama’s Long Beach office the next night, Tarrish told investigators, the lawyer ushered him to a straight back chair with three $100 bills lying on the seat cushion.

He quickly put the money in his pocket and left, he said, even though it was $200 short of what he had been promised. He needed the money so badly, he said, that he was not about to complain.

Nishiyama declined to be interviewed, referring reporters instead to his attorney, Henry Salcido. Salcido said that he had talked to DMV investigators recently about Tarrish’s allegations. He had no further comment because of the pending investigation.

Another attorney who has been interviewed by the DMV as a result of Tarrish’s charges is Barry G. Sands of Torrance.

Tarrish told investigators that Sands loaned him money on several occasions.

“He used to put $100 bills in matchbook covers,” Tarrish said.

Sands refused to comment on the matter and referred questions to his attorney, Robert Aitken. Aitken would say only: “I think Tarrish’s charges are baseless. Barry is innocent of . . . these allegations.”

Tarrish said the first lawyer he borrowed money from was James M. Gleeson of Torrance.

He said he received a loan of $350 two years ago and repaid $210. After that, Tarrish told investigators, he continued to borrow from Gleeson, usually about $50 at a time. During the last two years, Tarrish said, he has presided over about 15 of Gleeson’s cases.

Asked whether he loaned money to Tarrish, Gleeson said, “. . . That is not true. . . . I’ve told the DMV everything they wanted to know and they seem to be satisfied.” He had no further comment.

Loans were not the only favors that Tarrish said he received from attorneys.

Tarrish told investigators that one attorney routinely allowed him to charge meals to the lawyer’s account at a restaurant. But that lawyer never gave Tarrish any cash.

“He was smart enough to know that giving money to a pubic official is a no-no,” Tarrish said.

Nor did Streitfeld, the Santa Monica lawyer, ever give him money, Tarrish said. But, Tarrish charged, Streitfeld did help him get two bogus smog certificates for his car and camper truck. The smog certificates were unavailable for review by The Times because they are under investigation by the DMV, said DMV attorney Steven Solem.

Streitfeld denied Tarrish’s charge: “All he said to me was, he wanted to know if I could recommend somebody to him for some kind of mechanical problem he was having on a car.” He added: “I said, ‘I know a guy with a body shop and maybe he could help you out’. . . . He never gave me any indication he was trying to get something done illegally.”

Streitfeld said he heard nothing further about the body shop referral until DMV investigators contacted him in December.

In an interview with The Times, he dismissed Tarrish’s allegations as either a publicity stunt or the work of a “snitch” trying to save his job by turning in “as many people as he could.”

He also pointed out that Tarrish ruled against his clients in many cases.

“I don’t have the results. These people have all lost their licenses, so I don’t know where the bribe is,” Streitfeld said.

However, Tarrish did rule favorably for two of Streitfeld’s clients in January of 1986--the same month the attorney acknowledged referring Tarrish to the auto body shop.

One client was 22-year-old Adam Faura, whose license was suspended after he accumulated too many speeding tickets.

Faura told The Times that he found Streitfeld through the Yellow Pages. During their first meeting in the lawyer’s office, the young man recalled, Streitfeld said his case would be best handled at the DMV office in Long Beach.

Faura recounted how the attorney “underlined and circled many times, Long Beach.” He quoted Streitfeld as saying: “I have a connection here. The guy is kind of senile. He’ll do anything for me.”

Streitfeld disputed that account: “I told him (Faura) that Mr. Tarrish was, quote unquote, Santa Claus on driver’s licenses. I never said senile. I said he was extremely lenient.”

The day of the hearing, Streitfeld did not appear at Tarrish’s office because he had had an automobile accident. Faura’s suspension was lifted. Later, Faura refused to pay Streitfeld, setting off a long legal confrontation between the two.

Streitfeld filed suit in Small Claims Court and pressed criminal charges. He insisted that he was entitled to his fee because even though he had not attended the hearing, he had done other work on the case, including talking to Tarrish in advance.

Streitfeld testified last fall that he considered the hearing itself to be a “formality.” He testified that he had discussed the case with Tarrish several days before, and Tarrish had agreed to set aside Faura’s license suspension and remove him from probation.

Streitfeld told The Times that nothing he did was improper.

In arranging for Tarrish to hear Faura’s case, Streitfeld said he was only carrying out his responsibilities to his client.

“I called the easiest place I know of, the easiest judge I know of,” Streitfeld said. “That’s my job. Nothing crooked in it. Nothing improper in it. If there’s something wrong in it, tell me what it is.