UPDATE: LA DA says no charges to be brought in College of the Canyons $12 million embezzlement case
Hello everyone, been a while. I posted the original information about an audit at COC about a potential $12 million embezzlement scandal by the former president, Dr. Dianne van Hook.
It seems that yesterday, the Distract Attorney of Los Angeles released a statement that said, according to the Signal, "lacked the evidence to win a criminal case. " I've tried to find the source from the DA, but have yet to find it.
If you've been following this, this is extremely disappointing. It's mentioned in the article, but the original auditors, the F3 Law Group, found their findings "nothing short of egregious".
To quote myself from the original post (where you can find the video where the Law Group goes over these), these are some of the findings,
"Though no names were given, the legal team said they found ‘repeat offenders’ across nearly 800 Facilities contracts. These were College personnel, outside contractors, constructions companies, and consultants. Contracts were also repeatedly given to the same person under different company names, which is illegal.
Broken Public Contract code violations, broken Educational Code violations, broken State violations, etc. across the board. Best practices were not followed.
Overpayment of bills. Though not impossible, this process must involve a paper trail and Board approval. This was never done across several Facilities contracts which were paid in excess of their contract agreement
Several contractors did not have proper legal licenses of various types on projects. One contractor (employed multiple times over 20 years) had their license revoked for the majority of that time. These are easy to check and were seemingly never done.
Rampant bid splitting. Govt law states that a project over a certain dollar amount MUST be made available to the public for different companies to try and bid for to find the best candidate. Instead, College projects were divided up piecemeal in order to bypass this law and instead award contracts to chosen candidates and not to the public. An example they gave was a Cafeteria Project where several items required the same work (i.e. installing ovens, flooring, tables, etc.) but were split into different items with different dollar amounts to make them seem like different projects.
Lack of consistency to Consultant firms. Overpaid often, no reason given and well above market price. Over 15-20 years, around $4 million dollars over several contracts given to one consultant with no work found to support the payment.
Inspection Contracts with a total lack of transparency. No competitive process. Inconsistency across the board. Lump sum contracts paid in full at time of service, which is irregular. No back up invoicing to back up prices. Minimal to no proof of work done despite $4+ million paid.
Highly irregular projects that Facilities staff should have done instead of outside companies. This was billed several times and all are not industry standard. All of these projects were billed to the same Contractor. This includes, but is not limited to: Gum Removal: $4k - 5k per project. Sand box cleaning $3.5k. Pine needle removal $3k. Hang banners $6-7k. Bench Relocation (No price given)."
I'm not a lawyer, so I can't comment on any legality. But it's extremely disappointing to see this just....be let go. Hopefully the audit itself can be released one day and be made public.