True Detective : Firefighter’s Sleuthing Leads to Colleague’s Theft Charges

Ronald Creath was a gregarious, well-regarded Los Angeles County fire captain at the Whittier station who had kept the books for Local 1014 of the International Assn. of Firefighters for more than a decade.

Steve Johnson was a stubborn, gruff-spoken captain at the county’s Duarte station who began to believe that Creath was looting the local’s treasury.

But Johnson, who served with Creath on the union’s board of directors, could not persuade anybody on the board to investigate his suspicions.

To most people who knew him, Creath, a member of the department for 29 years, seemed to be the last person capable of fraud. He was the father of nine children, several of them adopted, and lived prosperously in Big Bear, supplementing his $60,000-a-year captain’s salary by selling real estate.

After Johnson took the extraordinary step of hiring his own attorney and enlisting the support of 70 other firefighters to demand a union investigation, a darker picture of Creath began to emerge.

As union treasurer since 1979, Creath, 54, appeared to have used Local 1014’s credit card and checkbook to conduct a 10-year personal shopping spree.

When the union finally agreed to conduct an audit, it discovered that Creath had made more than $300,000 worth of what auditors described as “unreasonable” or “unsupported” purchases of food, clothing and liquor between 1980 and 1990. In some cases, auditors said, Creath put personal purchases on the union’s card; in other cases he wrote union checks to pay personal credit card bills.

He had taken, in effect, about 3% of the union’s annual $1-million budget for his personal use, the audit indicated.

Last week, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office charged Creath with grand theft of “a value exceeding $100,000” and filing false state income tax returns. He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces up to eight years in prison.

Through his attorney, Creath declined to comment. He was reassigned to administrative duty last week, pending a departmental investigation.

The case has stunned and saddened many firefighters in Local 1014, which represents 2,500 members in the Los Angeles County, Orange County and El Monte City fire departments.

“What was so disheartening to me about this was that firemen just don’t steal,” said Lou Danes, a captain and former union board member who works at the Duarte station with Johnson. “We go into your house. We pick your mother up. All the valuables are there. There are nine of us, one of you, and your sick mother on the couch. And we don’t steal.”

Prosecutors said the alleged fraud never would have come to light unless union officials, after prodding by Johnson and other firefighters, had tipped them off.

As Johnson and the other firefighters were pressuring their union leaders to investigate his conduct in 1990, Creath was seeking reelection to a sixth two-year term, running on what his campaign literature called “an unquestioned record of honesty, integrity and efficiency in the collection and expenditure of your dues.”

Many members of the union’s board of directors, including Local 1014 President Dallas Jones, initially dismissed Johnson’s call for an investigation as politically motivated. Johnson was supporting a rival of Creath’s for the treasurer’s job, Jones said.

Union officials are all working firefighters who receive the equivalent of an extra two shifts pay each month from the union for the time they spend on union business. The treasurer is issued a credit card to purchase equipment and pay for union-related entertainment expenses.

As local president, Jones was required to co-sign the union checks that Creath wrote. He said he never questioned Creath because he trusted him, and because the books that Creath kept were annually audited--by an accounting firm the union is now suing.

“It has been very maddening to the membership,” Jones said last week. “We feel betrayed.”

It all started at the photocopying machine.

There, one day in June, 1990, Johnson said he found a slip of paper with a copy of Creath’s personal American Express card bill and a short column of figures written on Creath’s memo pad stationery. Next to each figure was jotted a union budget account category. The numbers added up to the same total as Creath’s credit card bill--$4,795.58--arousing Johnson’s suspicion that a union check might have been issued to pay it.

Johnson said his verbal requests for an investigation went nowhere. That October he wrote a letter demanding all union financial statements for the past five years.

The board balked. Johnson hired a lawyer, who threatened to sue the union’s board if the records were not made available. That letter was signed by 28 other firefighters who had contributed $100 apiece to defray legal expenses. They called themselves the Committee for Full Financial Accountability, which would soon grow to 70 members.

Johnson “has got integrity next to none. You can’t buy the guy,” said committee member Gary Striano, a fire captain who worked in the Whittier station with Creath.

By the end of last year, Creath had been defeated for reelection. According to Jones, Creath told him as he was preparing to leave office that the union would find “problems” in the books. The union board agreed to give the firefighters’ committee access to the credit card records, and also hired another accounting firm to perform a new audit.

Johnson, still distrustful of the union’s board, began his own makeshift audit.

He bought a personal computer with a spreadsheet program and spent weeks of his free time painstakingly entering details about each of 2,246 union credit card purchases made by Creath between 1982 and 1990, totaling $173,868.

Eventually, Johnson had a stack of computer printouts 1 1/2 inches thick that sorted Creath’s purchases by geography, chronology and store--even by whether Creath had been on or off duty on the day of each purchase.

“I was shocked,” he said. “The spreadsheet told the story of his lifestyle.”

Among the questionable charges Johnson uncovered were $129 at San Diego Wild Animal Park in 1989 and, two days later, $280 at Sea World. Sixteen purchases amounting to $1,577 were made at a Big Bear shoe store between 1987 and 1990. Fourteen purchases were made at a Palm Springs discount liquor store between 1985 and 1990 for $4,705--an average of $336 per purchase.

Creath apparently had also used the card to charge 135 meals worth $4,923 at a pizza restaurant in Big Bear, where he has lived on and off since 1982. In all, Creath ran up more than $27,000 in charges on the union credit card at various Big Bear businesses.

At a Marie Callender’s restaurant in San Juan Capistrano, where Creath lived between 1985 and 1987, he put $8,867 in meals on the union credit card, Johnson found.

Johnson’s work, along with the findings of the special union audit, were turned over to the district attorney’s special investigations division early last year.

By the middle of the year, every member of Local 1014 had received a copy of the audit from the union president.

In October, the union’s board filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against Creath and the accounting firm that he had used each year. The suit charged that Creath hid his conduct from the union’s board, and that the firm that performed the annual audits was negligent in reviewing Creath’s records.

Johnson, who says he is trying to decide whether to run against Jones this year for the presidency of Local 1014, is satisfied with the outcome.

“They underestimated me all along, all of ‘em did,” he said. “They felt I was just a troublemaker. I felt I was right all along.”