Head of Cleaning Firm Held in Theft of Checks

The owner of a janitorial firm that cleaned Inglewood City Hall is in federal custody on charges relating to allegations that he stole blank checks from the city and cashed them for more than $1.3 million, in part to support a gambling habit, authorities said.

Seung Chul Chang of Glendale gambled away some of the money in Las Vegas, where his efforts to cash a large check led to his arrest, investigators said.

Chang, 31, who ran Pasadena-based Sun Building Maintenance with his father, allegedly stole 34 blank checks from a city finance office, filled 10 of them out to his company and deposited them in the firm’s accounts at several area banks, prosecutors say in court documents filed in the case. City officials say that the deposited checks totaled $1.36 million.

Chang was arrested last Thursday at his home and is being held at a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles without bail on a charge of interstate transportation of stolen property. Authorities are considering additional charges against him relating to the alleged theft of the checks.

Chang’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.

FBI investigators were tipped off when Chang tried to cash a $245,000 cashier’s check July 8 at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel to pay a gambling debt, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jody Tabner-Thayer said. Prosecutors say that the money was part of a $470,547 city check that Chang had allegedly deposited in his account at California Korea Bank.

Inglewood officials terminated the services of the janitorial company in November, when it could not obtain a bond guaranteeing that it could complete its business contract with the city. The company was hired in July, 1990, when it presented the city with a low-bid contract of $23,375 a month to clean all city facilities. It even cleaned offices in Inglewood Police Headquarters, where detectives later investigated the case.

“They were doing all right as far as maintaining the building,” said Assistant City Manager Norm Cravens. “That was not the issue.”

The checks, cashed between November and March and ranging from $50,000 to $470,000, were drawn on a city account at Wells Fargo Bank. City officials are blaming the bank for clearing the fraudulent checks without noticing that they lacked official signatures and contained rows of Xs on the face indicating that they were voided.

“If you see these checks, there’s no way you, if you were a teller, would have cashed these checks,” Councilman Jose Fernandez said.

On Tuesday, the City Council voted to close its account of about $50 million at Wells Fargo and to sue the bank as part of an effort to recover the money.

Wells Fargo, however, said the checks were deposited in Chang’s business accounts at three or four other area banks and were not handled by Wells Fargo tellers. When the checks reached Wells Fargo, they were processed automatically, as are most corporate checks, bank officials said.

“The person that is in the best position to verify the authenticity is the customer,” Wells Fargo spokeswoman Kim Kellogg said. “We believe the city was negligent in their responsibility. They were not performing an appropriate review of their monthly statements.”

In a related incident, Anthony Gonzales Ganioco, 51, an employee of the company, was arrested Aug. 1 in an attempt to cash a forged $295,000 check from Panasonic Corp., where Sun Building Maintenance also performed cleaning chores, according to a complaint filed against Ganioco.