3 Arrested in Alleged Worker-Referral Scam : Fraud: Dummy ‘head-hunting’ agencies collected fees from Digital Equipment Corp. on new employees hired by other means, police say.

A minor clerical error led to the arrest Thursday of a former executive of Digital Equipment Corp. and two alleged accomplices on charges of siphoning nearly $300,000 from the computer company in an elaborate, three-year fraud scheme, police said.

The executive, Steven William Hunt, 43, of Arcadia, allegedly used his position as regional area employment manager of Digital to authorize payment to four bogus executive “head-hunting” agencies set up by his accomplices, Costa Mesa Police Detective Steven R. Labbitt said.

Labbitt gave this account of the alleged operation:

Under a carefully crafted scheme, Hunt scanned applications from newly hired employees in high-paying, high-tech positions. Hunt separated those who had been referred to Digital Equipment Corp. by legitimate executive search firms from those who responded to newspaper advertisements or applied on recommendations from other workers.

Information detailing annual salaries and positions of those employees not referred by head-hunting agencies was forwarded by Hunt to his accomplices, John Francis Mazarella, 54, of Mission Viejo, and Danielle Ann Marie, 41, of Laguna Niguel.

Mazarella, an independent consultant hired to screen employees for the company, and Marie, who was not connected with it, allegedly set up the bogus employment agencies and, using the personnel information supplied by Hunt, forwarded requests for referral fees to Digital Equipment Corp.

“Hunt would receive the invoice and authorize its payment, and it would then go to the finance department,” Labbitt said. “They would see his authorization for payment and, because it was his responsibility for processing the invoices, they would cut a check and send it out to any one of the four fictitious businesses (the suspects) had set up.”

Each invoice typically requested 15% of the new employee’s annual salary, which ranged from $50,000 to $80,000, Labbitt said. The suspects allegedly collected fees totaling nearly $300,000 between 1986 and 1989 by claiming that they had referred about 30 new employees to Digital, and deposited the money in six phony bank accounts.

Labbitt said the scam was uncovered when a clerk in the company’s finance department sent a check to a legitimate head-hunting company with a name similar to that of one of the four bogus companies.

“When (Mazarella and Marie) didn’t get the check upon invoicing, they told Hunt about it,” Labbitt said. “He went and told the clerk she had sent the check to the wrong place and told her to cut another one and send it. That raised suspicion about the (bogus) company.”

Hunt resigned last October after company security personnel confronted him about the bogus companies and invoices, Labbitt said. Warrants charging all three suspects with fraud were issued after a seven-month investigation by police, Labbitt said.

Mazarella and Marie were arrested at their homes Thursday. Hunt, who took a job in the human resources department of Disneyland Studios in Burbank, turned himself in after he was notified of his impending arrest. All three were released on $100,000 bail Thursday, Labbitt said. Arraignment is pending.