2 Clerks Are Accused of Pocketing Court Fees

Two Van Nuys Municipal Court clerks face embezzlement charges for allegedly bilking taxpayers out of nearly $120,000 in fees for record searches.

Also charged in the scheme is the husband of one of the employees, who is accused of charging clients court fees for background criminal record checks, and pocketing the money.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said the case, which was brought to authorities’ attention by an anonymous letter, is only the first to come from an investigation into similar practices across the county.

“There are other suspects and there’s an ongoing investigation,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Nicholas Koumjian said last week.

William Oses, his wife, Bridget Galvan-Oses, and Simon Cortez are scheduled to be arraigned in Los Angeles Superior Court this week on charges of grand theft, embezzlement and unauthorized use of a government computer.

Oses, 27, owned a small company called Rapid Research, which provided criminal record searches to larger companies in the business of pre-employment screening, Koumjian said.

Oses faces a maximum of eight years in prison, and the other two defendants face four years.

In September 1997, the Los Angeles Municipal Court began charging $5 per record to individuals requesting criminal record searches for background checks.

Courts receive thousands of those search requests daily and the fee, which goes to the county general fund, was implemented as a way to control the workload, said Marcia Skolnik, a court spokeswoman.

Galvan-Oses, 25, allegedly began doing the checks surreptitiously for her husband as soon as the fee was initiated.

In June 1998, Municipal Court officials received an anonymous letter alleging that Galvan-Oses was conducting the illegal searches. A court audit found that she and Cortez had conducted hundreds of unauthorized searches during the previous month and a half, according to court papers filed by Koumjian.

In an interview the following month, Galvan-Oses and Cortez, 26, both denied having made any unauthorized searches. Galvan-Oses even denied having heard of Rapid Research, her husband’s business.

However, workers found 18 pages of names and 26 computer printouts in a folder in her desk, leading to her suspension, court records show. She was later fired.

Cortez, who was a student worker, was fired immediately.

Oses and Galvan-Oses later admitted to one of Oses’ clients that they pocketed the search fees, according to court papers.

Koumjian said others may have been bribing clerks to do the records searches off the books.

In court papers, he said Galvan-Oses told her husband’s client that “the only way to get good service on the record searches was to pay court employees and that everyone was doing it.”