By Greg Krikorian and
Nicholas Riccardi

Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti's child support office has illegally held millions of dollars owed to thousands of families, according to a lawsuit filed Friday (2-19-99) that seeks to have the funds distributed immediately. The lawsuit, filed by taxpayers advocate attorney Richard I. Fine, specifically targets funds that have been held - sometimes for years - by Garcetti's office, most often because it says it cannot locate the people entitled to the money. "It isn't their money," Fine said of Garcetti's Bureau of Family Support Operations. "The money belongs to the parents."

In recent years, the district attorney's office has held as much as $25 million. The amount has dropped to about $14.5 million, since the Los Angeles Times asked about the fund last summer. Victoria Pipkin, Garcetti's spokeswoman, said that because the office had not seen the lawsuit, it could not respond to the allegations. She emphasized, however, that the office has been making strides in releasing the funds, noting that the $14.5 million it held as of Feb. 1 was $2.2 million less than on the first of the year. But Fine's lawsuit contends that Garcetti has no authority under California law to hold the funds longer than six months and that if he is unable to locate the entitled families, he is obligated after that time to return the money to non-custodial parents - usually the fathers.

By illegally holding the money, Fine alleged, Garcetti's office collects hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest each year for the county. Garcetti's office has acknowledged that it has held money in violation of the six-month requirement. "We had been," Pipkin said, "but that is no longer the case." Garcetti's office also holds money, the lawsuit alleges, when there is a dispute between the office and a debtor parent about the amount of money owed or between the welfare office and a custodial parent about how the money should be distributed. Fine's lawsuit was filed on behalf of John Ray Silva, who says that he has met his child support obligations but the district attorney's office filed false documents to try to collect an additional $64,000. "He represents all of the problems that the district attorney has in child support," Fine said of Silva. "They overcharged him… they harassed him… [and] his ex-wife is on his side," Fine said, citing an October, 1998, affidavit in which Suzette Silva says her husband owes her nothing.

The lawsuit represents the latest broadside against Garcetti's Bureau of Family Support Operations after a Los Angeles Times investigation last year. Among the L.A. Times' findings: that Garcetti's office has held on to millions of dollars because it claims it cannot locate the deserving families - families that, in several cases, the L.A. Times was able to locate using simple public records such as phone directories.

SOURCE: Excerpted from the 20 February, 1999, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "L.A. Suit Seeks to Force D.A. to Release Held Child Support." Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.