Professor’s Plea Poses a Dilemma for College Brass

A year ago, when business law professor Hal Mintz was struggling to prevent authorities from closing his massage parlor across from West Hollywood’s City Hall, his superiors at East Los Angeles College were singing his praises.

In a letter to West Hollywood’s Business License Commission, Frank Alderete, the college’s vice president for administration, praised Mintz for his integrity and problem-solving ability. Arthur D. Avila, the college president, told the commissioners that Mintz was “one of our most active and distinguished faculty members.”

Now, with the chairman of the business department having pleaded no contest last week to conspiracy to maintain a house of prostitution and two counts of state income tax evasion, embarrassed college district officials are singing a different tune.

“There’s no shortage of people around here who would like to slam the door shut (on Mintz) real fast,” said an official of the Los Angeles County Community College District who did not want to be identified. “But that may be easier said than done.”

Faced with criticism from faculty and students, who say Mintz has disgraced the college and ought to be removed, district officials say their efforts to oust the 57-year-old educator may be more difficult in the wake of a plea bargain between Mintz and the district attorney’s office.

In exchange for his no-contest plea to the three felonies, prosecutors agreed not to charge Mintz with pimping and pandering, which carry mandatory three-year prison terms upon conviction.

No More Than Year in Jail

Prosecutors also agreed to recommend five years of formal probation and no more than a year in County Jail, in addition to whatever fines a judge may impose, when Mintz is sentenced in Superior Court on Sept. 26.

Mintz could have received up to nine years in prison and fines of $50,000 if convicted on the original charges.

College district officials had hoped to use a provision of the state Education Code allowing them to automatically suspend Mintz from his $45,000-a-year teaching post had he been charged with either pimping or pandering.

“Unfortunately, the other offenses do not give us that latitude,” said Warren Kinsler, general counsel for the college district.

District officials are investigating their options--including bringing a disciplinary case against Mintz based not on his massage parlor but on allegations that he has a bad attendance record at his own classes.

The professor’s massage parlor, at 8574 Santa Monica Blvd., was closed in February after authorities said it was being used as a house of prostitution. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, at least 10 women had been arrested for sex-related offenses there since 1984.

Four former masseuses and two former managers of the establishment had agreed to testify against Mintz in return for immunity from prosecution, Deputy Dist. Atty. Elden S. Fox said.

The tax evasion charges stem from Mintz’s failure to file returns with the state Franchise Tax Board for 1985 and 1986. Financial records seized at Mintz’s home in San Marino showed that he earned at least $200,000 in 1986, Fox said.

The Internal Revenue Service is conducting its own investigation of Mintz, the prosecutor said.

Calling his client’s conduct “innocuous at most,” Anthony Glassman, Mintz’s attorney, said the professor agreed to the plea bargain only to avoid being suspended from the faculty position he has held 19 years.

“Our hope is that prior to sentencing we can convince the judge that he is really not guilty and then argue that he should not be suspended from teaching at an administrative hearing that will undoubtedly be initiated by the (college) district,” Glassman said.

A spokesman for the nine-campus community college district said officials are investigating complaints that Mintz may have violated his contract by frequently missing classes and may have misrepresented the conditions under which he was allowed to take a paid sabbatical in 1985.

No Immediate Action

But the spokesman, Norm Schneider, said the district will not take immediate action against the professor. “The thinking is that if we don’t work cautiously in a situation like this, we may find ourselves with an empty hand,” he said.

In the wake of revelations about Mintz’s recent troubles, some students and faculty at the 16,000-student Monterey Park campus have become critical of the administration’s handling of the matter.

“It’s a classic case of administrative impotence,” said Daniel Fertig, a biology instructor, who said top officials at the college “have known of (Mintz’s) antics for years and have chosen to look the other way.”

Several of Mintz’s former students complained that the professor was often late for class and sometimes failed to show up.

“I’d say we met for about two hours a month on average,” said Fred Brugger, who was in Mintz’s business law course last year. “People took his classes for easy A’s. I did it because I was carrying a full load and also taking paralegal courses at another school on the side, and I needed the break. But I didn’t learn anything.”

Rebecca Miranda, another student, said she received an A from Mintz last year but was so disappointed “by his not being there” that she changed her major to avoid having to take a follow-up course from him.

“We were supposed to meet for an hour three days a week,” she said. “It was a 9 o’clock class and he’d show up at 9:30 or 9:45, and a lot of times he wouldn’t show up at all. I didn’t get anything out of it.”

Mintz has repeatedly denied that he has had a problem with absences, saying he has never had a formal complaint lodged against him.

Although his recent problems have attracted notoriety on campus, Mintz is no stranger to controversy, according to current and former faculty members and administrators.

Several of the faculty picketed in protest after Mintz was appointed coordinator of student services in 1972, alleging that the appointment was a political payoff for what they claimed was his role in the ouster of a former president of the college.

Longtime faculty members familiar with Mintz said he has frequently been accused of not attending his classes.

“He’s the kind of person who makes it a practice to cultivate the right people, and that’s what’s saved him over the years,” one administrator said.

In a recent interview, Mintz said some of the criticism stems from his role as “a faculty politician.”

“You make friends and you make enemies,” Mintz said. “You kind of expect the people who are your enemies to exaggerate things.”

Mintz, who has said that he is involved in a dozen businesses and that he is an officer of seven corporations, has had his share of business problems too.

One of his companies bought radio time so he could host of a program called “The Law and You” on KIEV-AM. The show won an award from the California Bar Assn. in 1980 but was canceled after station officials accused Mintz of refusing to pay for $18,000 worth of air time.

To satisfy the debt, a collection agency obtained a court order to attach Mintz’s salary at the college, as well as to confiscate his 1979 Cadillac. But the car could not be found and the state Franchise Tax Board had already claimed priority in attaching his salary for unpaid taxes.

The radio show attracted renewed attention from his campus detractors recently after the student newspaper published a photo of a document showing that his Hal Mintz Productions, which produced the radio program, listed his campus office as its business location in violation of college policy.

Mintz, who claimed that the document was stolen from his office in an effort to discredit him, denied that he ever used the office for business purposes.

In 1981, Mintz was sued by investors in California Special Events Inc., a company he set up to organize swap meets in the Los Angeles area.

According to Superior Court records, a $29,000 lien was later placed against a San Bernardino property owned by Mintz to settle a claim by a lawyer that he broke an agreement to return the lawyer’s investment within a year. In addition, a San Fernando Valley couple won a $14,000 judgment against Mintz.

Two years ago, he was on the losing end of another lawsuit, which accused him of failing to honor a building lease in West Hollywood. A spokesman for a Delaware company that won an $8,300 judgment against the professor said the company was able to collect “about half” of what it was owed by attaching his salary.

But it wasn’t until last year, when West Hollywood officials revoked the license of another of his enterprises, 20th Century Travel Advisors Inc., doing business as the Beverly Hills Massage Parlor, that Mintz’s most serious problems began.

Although he claimed to operate the “cleanest massage parlor in California,” Sheriff’s Department vice officers painted a different picture.

They described massage booths located behind triple-locked doors, some equipped with video equipment showing X-rated movies and attended by scantily clad women whose income depended on sexual favors.

Investigators said records seized at the professor’s home revealed a scheme in which patrons who paid as much as $165 for the women’s services were able to disguise credit card purchases to make it look as if they had used another Mintz business that existed only on paper: American Oriental Limousine Service.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Fox said the evidence demonstrated that Mintz was intimately involved in maintaining the massage parlor for prostitution purposes, including providing prostitutes with assurances of legal counsel and bail bondsmen if needed.

These allegations have done nothing to quell criticism that the college district has been slow to act against the man who heads the largest department on campus, making the college a laughingstock.

“We’re talking about someone who is supposed to be a professor of business law,” said Safford Chamberlain, an English professor. “I can just imagine the kind of feeling he is able to engender when he comes to the chapter on ethics.”