Fifty-four current or former California Highway Patrol officers from the East Los Angeles Area Office have been charged in an alleged multiyear overtime fraud scheme totaling more than $225,000, state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Thursday.
In criminal complaints collectively totaling just over 200 pages, Deputy Attorney General Natasha Howard wrote that CHP Capt. Chris Margaris conducted a March 2018 departmental audit of overtime use by officers at the East Los Angeles Area Office in 2016 and 2017 and “discovered inaccuracies surrounding Caltrans overtime details, leading him to believe that officers at the East Los Angeles station may have submitted for and received compensation for overtime assignments not physically worked.”
The “alleged offenses were not discovered earlier because the supervisors who would have been the ones to report these activities were also committing the fraud” and that the alleged fraud “typically took place during graveyard hours, which was outside the normal working hours of office managers,” according to the complaints.
The CHP subsequently began an administrative investigation into every officer who had worked a Caltrans overtime detail within the previous two years, and a criminal investigation began in June 2018, according to the complaints.
The alleged fraud occurred between 2016 and 2018, according to the criminal complaints.
During that period, multiple officers in the East Los Angeles station were suspected of recording additional overtime hours when they were assigned to provide protection detail for Caltrans workers through the Maintenance Zone Enhanced Enforcement Program or the Construction Zone Enhanced Enforcement Program, according to the Attorney General’s Office, which alleged that officers would record and receive pay for eight hours of overtime rather than recording the three to four hours actually worked at a detail.
Three of the former officers allegedly recorded fake hours worked patrolling High Occupancy Traffic Lanes, according to the Attorney General’s Office, which alleged that those officers manufactured fake warnings and assistance given to drivers to support their overtime claims.
“Trust is a critical part of successful law enforcement. These defendants disregarded the law through their alleged actions and did so without thought of how their conduct would impact the California Highway Patrol or the community that trusted them to protect and serve,” Bonta said in a statement. “I’m thankful to CHP for its thorough investigation, and for working with DOJ (the Department of Justice) to hold these officers accountable.”
The officers — who are set to be arraigned March 17 and March 18 in a Los Angeles courtroom — collectively face a total of 302 counts, including grand theft and presentation of a fraudulent claim, with the allegedly fraudulent of overtime totaling $226,556, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
Among those named in the charges are James Yao Kuo, 39, and Jessie Anthony Carrillo, 50, who are awaiting a hearing to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to require them to stand trial in a separate case in which they are charged with conspiracy and accepting a bribe in connection with an alleged scheme to register exotic “gray market” cars.
The 54 defendants also include nine former CHP officers who were initially charged last year in connection with the alleged overtime fraud scheme while officers were assigned to protection details for Caltrans workers. The cases against those nine defendants were dismissed last December by a Superior Court judge at the request of Deputy Attorney General Paul Thies, who said the charges would be refiled.
Those former officers are: Connie Marie Guzman, 58; Edmund Zorrilla, 48; Giovanni Bembi, 43; Luis Manuel Mendoza, 46; William Matthew Fountain, 39; William Preciado, 57, who were initially charged last July; and Ruben Robles, 43; Rey David Thorne, 54; and Martin Gerardo Vasquez, 52, who were initially charged last September.
Those who are newly charged are:
— Vincent Barrera, 60;
— Francisco Javier Villalobos and Ralph Patrick Gomez, both 59;
— Anthony Joseph Martin Sr. and Paul Luke Martinez, both 55;
— Roman Gardea, 54;
— Guillermo Sanchez Jr., Luis Enrique Bravo Jr. and Sammy Santos Salazar, all 53;
— Scott Alan Sutton, 52;
— Thomas Santiago, 51;
— Pedro Chavez Jr. and Leonard Duenas, both 49;
— Ramiro Durazo, Remigio Bembi Jr., Jose Antonio Ramirez and James Horejs, all 48;
— Robert Andres Felix, Doris Peniche and Agustin Aguilera, all 47;
— Ruben Gerard Martinez, Roberto Cesar Flores, Thomas Moreno IV and Tarek Graves, all 45;
— Ramon Maciel Moran and Michael Stephen Pearson, 44;
— Francisco Javier Fonseca Jr., Nima Vaezi and Flavio Navar, all 43;
— Mario Sencion and Donald Rodrick Grimes Nelson, both 42;
— Jeffrey Robert McKee, Billy Joel Guillen, William Lindsey Godman and Juan Carlos Ulloa, all 40;
— Ramon Martinez Jr. and Javier Gonzalez, both 39;
— Martin Christopher Gonzales, 37;
— Mario Briseno II, 36;
— Uriel Gomez, 34;
— Andrew James Santelices, 33;
— Kyle Clayton Hartman, 31; and
— Tyler Randal Olson, 30;
The 54 defendants were booked Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
In a February 2019 statement, then-CHP Commissioner Warren Stanley said he had been made aware of the “ongoing investigation into overtime abuse in our East Los Angeles Area office, and I am frankly angered and appalled by the actions of those involved.”
Stanley said then that the issue appeared to be restricted to the East Los Angeles office.
“However, out of an abundance of caution and to ensure something like this doesn’t happen elsewhere, the CHP has put additional safeguards in place to prevent it,” he added.
Defense attorneys Joseph Weimortz and Samuel S. Park, representing Bembi and Preciado, wrote in court filings that the charges eventually dismissed against the two last year were “not the product of a good-faith investigation which uncovered previously undiscovered overtime fraud” and that the case “represents the criminalization of existing CHP overtime practices which CHP was aware of for decades.”
The defense attorneys wrote that under the written 2012 Standard Operation Procedure for the CHP’s East Los Angeles station — which was openly posted on the overtime board in the hallway outside the break room and the sergeants’ office and not changed until February 2019 — the CHP and Caltrans established a practice where officers who performed overtime protection for the Construction Zone Enhanced Enforcement Program and Maintenance Zone Enhanced Enforcement Program “would get paid the full amount even if Caltrans ended the detail early” and that the officers would remain on call for the remainder of the time.
The filings include a declaration from Art Acevedo, who was an officer, sergeant and captain of the East Los Angeles station and an assistant chief in the CHP’s Southern Division, who wrote that officers have historically been compensated by Caltrans for the amount of overtime hours promised when they show up for a shift and that he is “of the belief this is a practice statewide.”
Acevedo countered in his declaration that the CHP has “singled out and is scapegoating the East Los Angeles Area, which historically has been a command staffed predominantly by personnel of Hispanic descent.”