Bingo Raid Evidence Presented : Identity Inc.: Torn-up checks found in trash cans were uncashed payments from workers’ relatives, police say.

Some relatives and wives of workers at the city’s biggest charity bingo parlor might have played for free because their checks were found torn up in a trash can during a recent police raid, according to evidence presented Monday during an administrative hearing.

The uncashed checks--including one written by the wife of an off-duty Los Angeles police officer who worked as a security guard--were pieced together by police and presented during the third day of a city hearing that could lead to revocation of the bingo license held by Identity Inc.

City investigators said they believe the destroyed checks were payment for bingo cards and that those who wrote them ended up playing the game for free, an illegal misappropriation of charitable funds.

Edith Ryan, founder of the Woodland Hills charity that helps disabled people, is accused of illegally paying those who run the games, a violation of state law. Three former workers have testified that they were paid between $100 and $300 a night. Ryan has denied these claims and has said her accusers lied and stole money from the Identity bingo operation.

The accusations of the volunteers are under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, and Monday’s hearing was monitored by a sergeant with that unit.

Two current Police Department officers, who said they worked off-duty at Identity, testified Monday that they were unaware of any illegal payments to the volunteers.

The checks were introduced by Assistant City Atty. Byron Boeckman after Ken Welch, a bingo volunteer at Identity, testified on behalf of Ryan that he was not paid to help run the games.

One of the checks found during the Aug. 19 search was written by Welch’s mother. The $65 check represents the amount charged for three packs of bingo cards, a standard amount purchased by players.

In questioning Welch, Boeckman indicated that a financial benefit to his mother also benefited Welch, who lives with his mother.

Also, a $65 check written by Nancy Hurwitz, the wife of Los Angeles police Officer Ken Hurwitz, was found among the discarded checks. Ken Hurwitz was working off-duty as a security guard the night of the raid.

Two other torn checks totaling $115 and drawn on accounts of relatives of Identity volunteers were also found in the trash can, and a check for $97 written by a woman described by investigators as a friend of Ryan’s was recovered.

In early testimony Monday, Ken Hurwitz said he never saw any illegal payments to workers at Identity while working as a paid security guard. Under state law, security guards can be paid with bingo proceeds although the volunteers who run the game can not.

After testifying, Hurwitz declined to discuss whether his wife or other officers’ wives played for free.

Another police officer, Ronald Ponzi, also said he never saw any payments to volunteers or heard workers discussing the issue.

Last week, three former Identity workers made accusations to a Times reporter that officers knew of the payments to volunteers. Under oath Monday, Debra Basham and Cindy Houseman, two of the three former workers who said they were paid, testified that they believed officers were present when volunteers talked about compensation.

“Conversations? I’m sure they overheard conversations,” Basham said.

Ryan’s attorneys sought to discredit Basham’s testimony by reading from sworn statments she made in June, 1984, denying that she had profited from working for Identity.

At the start of Monday’s hearing Ryan was allowed to respond under oath to two Times articles that repeated allegations of possible police misconduct. She said contrary to news reports, she instructed officers to closely monitor workers whom she suspected could be “diverting or mishandling funds.”