Probe of Alleged Child Support Fraud Faulted

A federal inquiry into alleged fraud within Los Angeles County’s child support program consisted of just two phone calls--one of them to the head of the program, according to a General Accounting Office memo.

Further, the GAO said the Department of Health and Human Services’ office of inspector general did not interview any of more than a dozen people who a confidential informant claimed had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing within the child support program in the office of Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

“The source provided . . . information regarding misconduct by [the] Los Angeles D.A. office employees and . . . 12 to 14 names of people who either allegedly committed acts of misconduct or witnessed such acts by fellow employees,” the GAO said in a letter to a congressional subcommittee released this week.

“HHS OIG [Human Services office of inspector general] did not attempt to interview these employees.”

The GAO letter was seen by one California congressman’s office as evidence that Human Services’ inspector general’s office did not--as requested--investigate accusations of criminal conduct within Garcetti’s program.

“The GAO was charged with evaluating the adequacy of the inspector general’s investigation and essentially found that not only was it not an adequate investigation, it was no investigation,” said David Foy, aide to Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), who requested the GAO review.

Other federal officials, insisting on anonymity, were more blunt.

“They had a number of leads they could have followed and didn’t. And we are very, very surprised,” said one official.

Added another: “It could have been an example of how not to do” an investigation.

Amid questions about the thoroughness of the agency’s inquiry, a top official with the inspector general’s office defended the inspector general’s work.

“First and foremost, before my office can lawfully open a criminal investigation into allegations of misconduct, our investigators must be reasonably assured that there is a legal basis, or predicate,” for an inquiry, John E. Hartwig, deputy inspector general for investigations, wrote the GAO on Tuesday.

“For us to open a criminal investigation without sufficient predication would be a gross abuse of our authority,” Hartwig added.

Referring to The Times’ series last year on Garcetti’s troubled child support program, Hartwig said the stories “made clear” that Los Angeles County’s agency “has experienced significant and long-standing management problems.”

The Times found that despite a $100-million budget and sweeping enforcement powers, Garcetti’s office failed to collect support in the vast majority of its 500,000 cases, demanded child support from men it knew were not fathers, and held millions of dollars because it said it could not locate the single parents who were due the money.

“However,” Hartwig wrote in his letter, “management problems are not a crime and are appropriately dealt with through administrative oversight efforts rather than a criminal investigation.”

But the GAO report and officials who have seen it raise questions about how far the inspector general’s office went before determining no probe was warranted.

According to the report, the inspector general’s office met last Oct. 30 with attorney Gloria Allred about problems within the district attorney’s program. Then, the inspector general’s office waited until Nov. 19 to contact a former employee of the child support program who claimed knowledge of fraud.

After talking to the employee by phone, however, the inspector general’s office did not attempt to contact any of the dozen or so individuals with alleged information about misconduct.

Then, on Nov. 20, according to the GAO report, the inspector general’s office also spoke by phone with Garcetti’s child support director Wayne Doss, whom the confidential source had identified as “one of the D.A. office employees who had engaged in misconduct.”

Five days later, the federal inquiry ended, the GAO report says, listing no other indications of interviews or investigation by the inspector general’s office.

Responding to the findings, one federal official said Wednesday it was impossible to determine “whether any of the allegations are true because [the inspector general’s office] never took a look.”

“You just got to go a little deeper,” said the official. “I mean, it is clear they opened and closed the case on a certain date and they didn’t go” further.

In his Tuesday letter to the GAO, however, Hartwig said, “We determined that so much time had passed that these allegations were no longer ripe for investigation.

“Additionally,” he wrote, “even if the allegations were true, they would not have affected federal payments to Los Angeles County. Therefore, no monetary damage indicating fraud to federal programs could have occurred.”

Hartwig did not elaborate and Health and Human Services officials did not return calls for comment Wednesday.

But McKeon’s aide, Foy, said the congressman’s office still wants to examine whether funds were lost.

Contributing to this report was Times staff writer Jeff Leeds.