Inglewood Custodial Chief Held in Theft of School Funds

A custodial supervisor in the Inglewood Unified School District who allegedly put as many as 77 phantom employees on the payroll has been arrested more than one year after an investigation was launched into the disappearance of $441,000.

Andrew Lee Truesdale was fired from his job in December but not arrested until Wednesday after police spent more than a year investigating the case, Inglewood Police Sgt. Grant Price said.

With a search warrant in hand, police scoured Truesdale’s home in Los Angeles early Wednesday and seized computer records and financial records that are believed to be related to the skimming of thousands of dollars from the school budget.

Truesdale was expected to be arraigned Monday on charges of grand theft and misappropriation of funds. He was transferred Thursday from the Inglewood Jail to the Los Angeles County Jail in downtown Los Angeles.

School officials were alerted to the scam last year when the district’s maintenance budget doubled in six months, said school board member Loystene Irvin.

“We really don’t know what the depth of this is,” Irvin said. “We only covered a year and a half in time [in the investigation].” Truesdale worked for the school district for five years.

According to auditors, Truesdale had a dead man on his custodial staff as well as a prison inmate. Truesdale was first arrested in December but released because of lack of evidence.

Since Truesdale was dismissed last December, four other school employees have been arrested. Among them was Langston Phillips, a clerk in the district’s administration office, who was convicted of embezzling public funds earlier this year. He took $20,000 worth of district checks and deposited more than $4,000 in his personal account, police said.

Another employee, John Rabun, the Inglewood Adult School principal, has been charged with embezzling $27,000 for use as a down payment on a $425,000 Ladera Heights home.