Raids Conducted in UCI Probe : Investigation: Agents swarm homes, offices of three doctors in fertility clinic scandal, seizing records.

Scores of law enforcement officers searched two upscale homes, medical offices and storage spaces of three doctors embroiled in the UC Irvine fertility clinic scandal Tuesday, seizing boxes of records and personal items in dramatic early-morning raids.

Led by the FBI, investigators from at least seven federal, state and local agencies served search warrants and collected everything from tax returns and checkbooks to patient records and a child’s personal computer.

“They searched the whole house . . . bedrooms, the garage--they even searched the trash,” said Ronald G. Brower, the attorney for Ricardo H. Asch, who was summoned by Asch’s family at 6:30 a.m. to the doctor’s $850,000 stucco home in the gated community of Big Canyon in Newport Beach. “It was so unnecessary.”

Brower said he had offered on two occasions to hand over any documents or other items sought by the U.S. attorney’s office, for which the FBI conducted the search. But his offers, he said, were rebuffed by Deputy U.S. Atty. Wayne Gross. Gross did not return repeated telephone calls Tuesday.

The three doctors are accused of misappropriating human eggs and embryos, pocketing patient fees owed to UCI Medical Center, fraudulently billing insurance companies and stonewalling investigations into the alleged wrongdoing. Asch is also accused of prescribing a fertility medication not approved for use in the United States.

Sources close to the multi-agency investigation said that officials are also looking into possible tax evasion, mail fraud and smuggling of additional fertility drugs. The doctors have denied any deliberate wrongdoing. The UCI clinic closed in June.

Attorneys for physicians Sergio C. Stone and Jose P. Balmaceda complained that the high-profile raids were a waste of taxpayer dollars and amounted to publicity stunts.

“No one has ever told us of the interest in having the documents, nor has any request been made by federal agencies for these documents,” said Stone’s attorney, Karen Taillon, in a prepared statement. “The actions are highly inappropriate; it could have been done in less dramatic ways and possibly was only done in this way for show.”

Balmaceda’s attorney, Patrick Moore, said that federal officials needed only to subpoena the records they sought. “To barge in . . . and start looking through patient records was, in my opinion, completely unnecessary,” he said. Investigators searched Balmaceda’s Laguna Hills office but not his Corona del Mar home, Moore said.

But investigators from several agencies said they had been repeatedly stymied in their pursuit of records.

FBI officials refused to confirm how many locations were served or how many investigators were involved. But a source close to the investigation said that officials targeted six locations. The U.S. Customs Service alone dispatched 30 agents, an agency official said. A contingent of at least 20 agents and officers from various agencies arrived at Asch’s front door, Brower said.

Agencies involved in the searches included the FBI, the U.S. Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the Medical Board of California, the UC Irvine police, the U.S. Customs Service and local police agencies. The Orange County district attorney’s office served as an adviser. The agents removed 35 boxes from Asch’s home--even taking a computer belonging to Asch’s children, Brower said. He said that Asch was at a meeting away from home when agents arrived but that his wife, Silvia, and three of his children were awakened by the raid.

Brower said that the agents were “professional and courteous” and that Silvia Asch was “surprised [but] totally cooperative,” even playing a videotape for agents at their request. “They don’t have anything to hide,” Brower said of the Asches.

But Brower questioned the timing of the raid, saying that if agents were so concerned about destruction of evidence, they could have moved faster.

“If anybody was going to destroy anything,” Brower said, “they would have done it months earlier.” He hastened to add that his client has not destroyed any records.

All told, the officials left with 53 items, Brower said, including financial information about Asch’s horse-racing activities, an inventory of frozen eggs, personal checkbooks and tax records.

The search warrant served on the home made multiple references to insurance records and billing under the federal CHAMPUS program that serves military dependents. The warrant cited documents “that tend to reflect compliance [with] . . . or evasion and attempts to evade” federal, state and private insurance regulations.

The warrant covered activities not only at UCI but also at AMI/Garden Grove Medical Center and a firm called Bio-Diagnostics. It sought passports and visas, calendars and diaries, “large amounts of currency” and safe deposit keys.

The warrant also hints at possible expansion of the investigations, seeking information on foreign scholars and other medical personnel operating at the clinic. The document reveals for the first time investigators’ interest in the activities of Cesar Negrete, a UCI Center for Reproductive Health business manager, who the university has said helped remove evidence from the clinic last April.

Agents seized two boxes of documents from Asch’s Santa Ana medical office near Western Medical Center, including patient rosters, consent forms, telephone bills, bank statements and papers regarding human reproduction and ethics, officials said. They took away similar materials from Balmaceda’s office in Laguna Hills and CPN Medical Management Inc. in Tustin.

Federal and state agents arrived at Balmaceda’s Laguna Hills office, leased from Saddleback Memorial Medical Center, about 7 a.m., according to Jennifer Lefebvre, a spokeswoman for the medical center.

They presented search warrants to security guards at the facility, then were allowed to enter the six-floor Saddleback Medical Tower, adjacent to the medical center.

The search lasted about five hours, ending around noon, Lefebvre said, noting that federal and state agents declined to inform hospital personnel of what it was they were taking.

In addition, authorities searched Stone’s Laguna Beach home and raided a “storage facility” containing patient records, according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

State Auditor Kurt Sjoberg said his office did not participate in the searches but should be able to use the seized documents for its ongoing investigation of UC Irvine and its now-shuttered fertility clinic.

Sjoberg said the early-morning raids summed up the frustration of all the investigating agencies at obtaining documents in the case. He said his office has been battling the physicians’ attorneys for financial and tax records and office documents for three months.

“I think there’s sort of a common agreement that the [doctors’] attorneys are keeping us from full and unfettered access,” said Sjoberg, whose office began investigating after a whistle-blower complaint.

Sjoberg sued the three doctors Friday after they failed to comply with subpoenas requesting documents. A court date is expected next week, Sjoberg said.

Orange County Assistant Dist. Atty. Charles Middleton said the federal authorities have taken the lead in the investigation because “a majority, if not all, of the [possible charges] will come from there.”

“It’s the fraud angle of the investigation,” he said. “If you look at it, the whole thing looks like fraud.”

Times staff writers Tracy Weber, Michael Granberry and Martin Miller contributed to this report.