Records Seized at Disability Agency

Investigators with a state anti-fraud unit this week seized documents, computers and other equipment from the offices of a private Los Angeles agency that serves nearly 8,000 developmentally disabled children and adults.

Sources said the nonprofit South Central Los Angeles Regional Center for Persons with Developmental Disabilities Inc. is being investigated for possible Medi-Cal fraud.

On Tuesday, a team of agents from the state’s Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse unit served search warrants on the office near USC, according to Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman with the state attorney general’s office.

Jordan said no charges have been filed in the case. She declined to comment on why the agency had been targeted or on the nature of the sealed search warrants.

A lawyer for the regional center, Judith Enright, also declined to discuss the investigation. Enright said the center’s executive director, Dexter A. Henderson, was on leave from the agency as of Wednesday and was replaced by an assistant, Beverly Morgan, who is serving as acting director.

The South Central center is one of 21 regional centers statewide that contract with the California Department of Developmental Services to coordinate care for people with developmental disabilities such as mental retardation, autism, cerebral palsy and other ailments.

The South Central agency was founded in 1974 and serves more than 7,800 clients in an area that encompasses much of South and Southwest Los Angeles and other cities, including Compton, Downey, Paramount, Dominguez Hills and Carson.

The agency’s Web site said it has a budget of $90 million, a staff of 240 and more than 500 community providers with whom it contracts for transportation, home health care and other services.

Marsha Mitchell, community relations manager at the South Central center, said that employees had not been told what investigators were looking for, but that they had to vacate their offices for much of the day Tuesday as agents removed boxes of papers.

Mitchell said, however, that no services to clients had been disrupted.

“For our clients, parents and vendors, no one has been impacted, nothing has been altered; consumers can access all of the services they need,” Mitchell said.