Clandestine Unit Keeps Tabs on County Workers : Fraud: Investigators have helped recover at least $1.1 million from errant employees. But labor officials cite the danger of civil rights violations.

Buried in the basement of the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration is a nondescript office so veiled in secrecy that visitors are admitted only after being scrutinized through a peephole.

Its eight employees prefer to be identified strictly by their first names, and they refuse to be photographed on the job.

But they routinely take covert pictures of others--fellow county workers. They also may shadow their county colleagues or rifle through their trash.

The eight are the cloak-and-dagger core of a little-known Los Angeles County effort to thwart employee wrongdoing and fraud.

Seeking to save money and restore public trust in government, the county has quietly deployed these auditors-cum-gumshoes and taken other steps to keep its 84,000 employees honest, including auditing randomly selected telephone extensions and even hiring private detectives to tail workers.

No fraud is too small to ferret out, it seems. A health department employee was counseled recently for stealing newspapers from a vending machine.

But interviews with the investigators and their official reports show the other end of the spectrum, as well, such as the doctor at Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar who was dismissed for being “so zonked up on drugs that she was visiting Saturn,” in the words of an investigator who would identify himself only as Jack.

Then there was the manager in the Department of Children’s Services who resigned after investigators discovered he spent more than $500,000 on unauthorized computer services for the department and falsified records.

Many offenses are reported anonymously by employees over a “tattler” hot line set up in October, 1989, at the request of Supervisor Mike Antonovich after a county Fire Department accountant was charged with stealing $800,000. Investigators from the auditor-controller’s office were assigned to follow up on tips, and a year later the unit was merged with a similar group of investigators in the county administrator’s office.

Since the hot line’s inception, the county has recovered about $1.1 million from errant employees--about 33 cents for every dollar it has spent on the investigative unit, officials said.

Although the unit thus does not pay for itself, it seems, it may be saving untold millions by deterring other theft, officials say. In fact, investigators in the basement office complain that their annual budget of $634,000 is insufficient, forcing them to spend their own money on tools of the trade, including telephoto lenses, cellular phones and seminars on how to interrogate suspects.

“We’re only getting the tip of the iceberg of the fraud that’s out there,” said Marion Romeis, the county’s head fraud investigator and the only one who would fully identify herself.

But such sweeping allegations anger union officials who represent county workers. They say employee fraud is rare and complain that tips about managers and top officials are rarely investigated, whereas complaints against rank-and-file workers are zealously pursued. More ominous, they say, is the potential violation of workers’ civil rights--an abuse that is easy to overlook when the public is clamoring to slash government waste.

“When you start a spy unit, the question is who spies on the spies,” said J. Guido DeRienzo, representative of Council 36 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “How do we know they’re not going overboard?”

Surveillance of employees is legal as long as workers are watched while they’re in a public place, said attorney Stephen P. Pepe, a labor law expert at O’Melveny & Myers. So is rifling through an employee’s desk as long as employers verbally notify workers of the policy, he said. As for a worker’s garbage at the office, it is free for the taking.

Many of the 860 tips the hot line received last year complained of “time abuse”--working too few hours in a day, taking lengthy lunch hours, or similar offenses, said Mike Galindo, an assistant auditor-controller. The pattern of complaints is seasonal, with more calls in the summer when the weather is good, and theft tips near Christmas, he said.

Investigators from the basement unit work with the district attorney’s office and the Sheriff’s Department on the rare occasions when large-scale criminal investigations are mounted. Four years ago, a sting operation netted a group of employees stealing business license fees.

The Board of Supervisors exercises only limited scrutiny of the anti-fraud efforts, partly to keep the investigations untainted by political considerations, officials said.

Supervisors receive quarterly reports that offer scanty, one- or two-line summaries--without revealing employees’ identities--of the investigations not only by the basement unit but by the handful of workers in other county departments who also seek out fraud.

At least one board member--Supervisor Gloria Molina--also requests the list of tips so she can keep track of whether complaints are being investigated. Some supervisors, however, were not even aware of the methods employed by the unit, such as the use of private investigators.

“I didn’t know about it,” Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said. “But you have to do it. You can’t condone drug use or fraud.”

“It’s responsible public policy,” Antonovich said. “The procedures they use are just part of it.”

County employees can appeal the discipline that results from an investigation if they are suspended for five days or more, or fired. Then the case goes before a hearing officer and is ultimately decided by the Civil Service Commission. Otherwise, it remains an internal matter between the employees and their manager or department head.

“I can’t remember any particular case that went to the commission where the county was way off; frankly, they’re pretty good,” said Herman Santos, a Civil Service advocate with Service Employees International Union, Local 660, which represents about 40,000 county employees. “They really do their homework.”

Criminal charges are rarely brought, partly because it’s easier to fire someone than convict them, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Yochelson, recalling a 1990 case he lost involving a county secretary whose former lover alleged that she had stolen office supplies.

There was no prosecution of the Olive View Medical Center doctor who stole narcotics meant for patients and instead gave them intravenous doses of water, Romeis said. Nor were criminal charges brought against the Department of Children’s Services worker who bought $500,000 worth of computer hardware for the department--without authorization--and then cooked the books to make it appear the money had been spent in $25,000 increments on employee training.

Then there was the “paper caper.” Investigators tailed a Department of Mental Health employee and took photographs of him selling boxes of county-owned photocopy paper to local printers. He was fired.

Of about 400 investigations concluded last year, 30% substantiated wrongdoing, Romeis said. If a tip cannot be substantiated, the employees in question may never know they were investigated, Galindo said.

Two years ago, the Department of Public Works hired private detectives from PDQ Personnel Services to tail an employee suspected of illegal drug use. In four days, no evidence was found, said Roslyn Robson, deputy director of the department.

The firm, which was paid $2,227 for the job, is still on retainer with the Public Works Department and has contracts with other county agencies, a PDQ spokeswoman said.

Some of the county’s anti-fraud efforts do not involve clandestine tips and follow-up sleuthing, instead relying on routine reviews.

To reduce telephone bills, the Public Works Department installed a sophisticated telecommunications system at its Alhambra headquarters that includes telephones equipped with timers, Robson said. Employees are advised to avoid talking for more than 30 minutes and must explain each call that exceeds the limit, she said. The department also randomly selects 12 employees a month who must sit down with their supervisors to justify their phone calls, she said.

“There’s a happy medium between ‘Big Brother is watching’ and no supervision,” Robson said, “and we believe right now the county is at that happy medium.”