2 Ex-FEMA Inspectors Accused of Fraud : Crime: Pair is charged with faking quake reports on as many as 70 properties. Meanwhile, 13 people are held for allegedly false claims.

Two former FEMA earthquake damage inspectors have been accused of fabricating inspection reports on as many as 70 properties they never visited after the Jan. 17 Northridge quake.

As a result of the faked reports, federal prosecutors said Thursday, some homeowners and tenants were denied thousands of dollars in benefits they should have gotten, and others received more than they deserved.

The criminal complaints--the first to target earthquake inspectors--were announced as federal authorities carried out a new round of arrests of individuals who allegedly filed false claims for quake relief with FEMA or with the Small Business Administration.

Thirteen people, eight of them from the San Fernando Valley area--and including two mother-daughter pairs--were accused of collecting up to $12,150 by falsely claiming they lived in severely damaged homes or apartments.

The most serious charges, however, were brought against inspectors Phyllis Hawkins, 36, of Moreno Valley and Eugene Dolezal, 69, of Denver. Both worked for Vulcan Services Inc., one of two private firms hired by FEMA to conduct thousands of inspections, for $39 each, as follow-ups to applications for assistance filed by residents.

FEMA officials became suspicious of Hawkins’ work after a bewildered Mission Hills homeowner sent back a $3,545 check he had received “and explained that his home had not yet been inspected,” according to the complaint.

Despite never visiting the home or speaking to the owner, Hawkins wrote a report detailing damage to a sliding glass door, microwave oven and television--when, in fact, the oven and television emerged unscathed and “the home did not have a sliding glass door,” the charges state.

In other cases, she allegedly reported that a homeowner’s electric fan was damaged, when there was none in the house, and that walls needed “Sheetrock replacement”--when the walls were made of plaster.

Although Hawkins was formally charged with six instances of filing false reports, she has since admitted “that she made up 10 to 20 FEMA inspection reports,” federal prosecutors said.

Hawkins, who was arrested Thursday, faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted on all counts of filing false reports.

Dolezal was accused of filing nine false reports but admitted “to not visiting approximately 50 damaged residences . . . he claimed to have inspected,” prosecutors said. In all, Dolezal submitted 643 inspection reports, according to federal records.

In his case, routine follow-up inspections by FEMA officials apparently uncovered the fraud.

Dolezal, who is scheduled to surrender to federal authorities in Denver, faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted on all counts. When confronted by FEMA officials, he reportedly explained that he had inspected the outside of the structures in each case but failed to go inside because “these inspections involved a red-tagged building, which was inaccessible.”

But prosecutors said the structures were not red-tagged.

Quake assistance applicants told investigators that Dolezal had spoken to them over the phone, then asked them to come to the Van Nuys motel where he was staying to sign the appropriate forms. The result was “large errors in his evaluation of the applicants’ damages,” the criminal complaint said.

“Some people don’t get enough and others should not be getting as much as they are,” explained Assistant U.S. Atty. Nathan J. Hochman. The cases are being rechecked to correct the errors, he said.

Federal prosecutors also are continuing their investigation to determine if other FEMA inspectors “may have committed similar fraudulent acts,” Hochman said.

Hawkins told investigators that she could not afford to conduct inspections in all cases because she was working out of her Moreno Valley home and “wasn’t being paid enough to keep coming into Los Angeles,” Hochman said.

Of the $39 that FEMA paid Vulcan Services for each case, employees such as Hawkins and Dolezal received from $22 to $25 for each inspection, the prosecutor said.

The January earthquake required a small army of inspectors to help in the various government assistance programs.

A 25-year veteran of insurance adjusting, Dolezal said he was hired by Vulcan and received two days of training in Redwood City before moving to the motel in the hard-hit San Fernando Valley.

The criminal complaint alleges that, unlike Hawkins, he at least spoke by phone with the quake victims assigned to him after they filed applications for FEMA grants.

One Northridge apartment dweller told investigators that, during their conversation, Dolezal explained that “since she lived within a specific ZIP Code area, it was unnecessary for FEMA to visually inspect her dwelling.”

Later, the woman was notified by FEMA that--based on Dolezal’s report--she was not eligible for disaster funds. After she filed an appeal, however, her case was reviewed--and she was found eligible for $2,300 in emergency housing vouchers.

In another case, Dolezal may have missed evidence of fraud, the complaint alleges. If he had inspected another Northridge apartment, “he would probably have learned that FEMA received five separate applications from this three-bedroom apartment . . . (and) paid $625 twice for the damaged kitchen, $2,700 for three bedroom claims . . . and $600 for a dining room that . . . did not exist.”

With Hawkins, in contrast, it was not the aid applicants but the inspector herself who allegedly invented damage, as in the case of a Mission Hills couple who she said deserved $6,655 in grants. The couple later told investigators that, in fact, “their vacuum cleaner, washer, refrigerator and kitchen range had not been damaged.”

Then there was Emmitt L. Adams, a 74-year-old retiree, also of Mission Hills. He sent back the $3,545 check he received, alerting FEMA that his home had never been inspected.

“I didn’t want money for something that doesn’t belong to me,” Adams said Thursday. “I knew it couldn’t be mine. . . . I didn’t know what I was entitled to.”

Although Hawkins and Dolezal are the first two inspectors charged, 39 other cases have been brought by the federal task force set up to check for fraud in the earthquake relief efforts.

The group charged Thursday included Raquiesha Williams, 23, and her mother Laveringe Williams, 46, of North Hollywood; Dorothy Dorsey, 48, and her daughter Dianna Dorsey, 27, of Hollywood; Jamaul Lindsey, 21, of North Hollywood; Lakesha Carroll, 20, of Canoga Park; Darius Brown, 24, of Van Nuys; Sonia Valladares, 20, of Canoga Park; Arturo Cano, 27, of Fillmore, and Shedonna Morrison, 19, of North Hollywood.

With Thursday’s arrests, 29 FEMA applicants have now been charged with filing false claims, totaling more than $100,000. Two SBA loan applicants have been accused of fraudulently seeking more than $1.5 million, and eight retailers have been charged with illegally exchanging food stamps.