County Hotline Celebrates 10 Years of Tips

Few crime-fighting tools are as valuable as the snitch.

Take the success of the county hotline to report cheating government employees and contractors, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Its creator, county Supervisor Mike Antonovich, boasts that tipsters have led to over 3,500 fraud investigations in a decade.

After completing those investigations, authorities have taken actions ranging from a reprimand to criminal charges against workers in more than 1,200 cases.

The hotline rings into the Los Angeles County Department of Auditor-Controller, where eight people spend the majority of their days logging tips and investigating them. People squeal on everything from co-workers who cheat on their time cards to employees who take bribes.

Assistant Auditor-Controller Tyler McCauley said a majority of the calls are from employees complaining, usually anonymously, about other employees not doing their jobs, completing personal business while they’re on the clock and other “work hour” abuses.

Those complaints are usually handed over to the particular county department where the employee in question works and investigated internally, he said.

The remainder, which involve serious allegations such as theft or bribery, are investigated by the auditor-controller’s office, McCauley said.

Investigators have discovered employees stealing from government aid recipients, receiving welfare while employed by the county and accepting bribes from county suppliers.

In the first six months of this year, McCauley said, calls to the hotline led to dozens of investigations and resulted in four criminal convictions, eight resignations and nine firings. In seven cases, people have paid back the money they stole from the government.

In one case, a longtime employee for the county chief administrator demanded contractors bribe him to keep county work. Authorities said he solicited $10,000 worth of meals, computer equipment, golf clubs and tickets to sporting events.

The employee was sentenced to jail time and community service and ordered to pay $1,400 in restitution, according to Antonovich’s office.

An employee in the treasurer-tax collector’s office was prosecuted after stealing nearly $7,600 from the government. Antonovich’s office said the man was fired, convicted, sentenced to community service and probation and ordered to repay the taxpayers’ money.

The auditor-controller also investigated a civilian Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department manager and private contractor for bribery. The investigation, which followed an article in The Times, led to felony convictions for both food vendor Rick Hodgin and Sheriff’s Department assistant food-service chief Fredrick Gaio.

Calling it the worst example of government corruption he’s seen in his 26 years on the bench, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis B. Rappe last month sentenced the pair to prison terms of five years and three years and four months, respectively. They were also ordered to pay $21,400 in restitution.

Employees who quit or were fired between January and June alone include one who fraudulently issued food stamps and another who told a welfare recipient to pay a nonexistent charge and pocketed the money.

Also this year, four physicians with the Department of Health Services were found to have inappropriately billed the state $53,079, according to the auditor-controller. Three of them have resigned.

The hotline’s toll-free number is (800) 544-6861.