Ex-Official Denies Swindling County

Kevin DeWitt, the county’s former mental health manager, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges that he swindled the county out of $255,000 in wages by covering up a criminal past and presenting forged documents to obtain his $85,000-a-year job.

DeWitt, 40, declined comment after a brief hearing and quickly left Superior Court. Defense attorney David Follin told reporters that his client has done nothing wrong.

“Kevin DeWitt was thought of as highly successful at what he did and was well thought of by his superiors and people who worked with him,” Follin said.

But Assistant Dist. Atty. Terence Kilbride said evidence he will present at a preliminary hearing later this month will show that DeWitt conducted a shadow life, going to great lengths to juice up his job application and conceal his past brush with the law. DeWitt lied about eight bank fraud convictions dating back 10 years on employment forms and gave county officials a phony doctoral diploma and bogus university transcripts, Kilbride said.

DeWitt is charged with single felony counts of forgery and grand theft that, if he is convicted, could lead to three years in prison. The grand theft charge stems from prosecutors’ contention that DeWitt was not entitled to the roughly $255,000 in pay he earned during three years of county employment.

“The county would not have given him the job if they knew his background,” Kilbride told reporters after Wednesday’s hearing. “He did not have a right to his salary.”

DeWitt resigned in August after news reports disclosed that he lied about his past when applying for a deputy director position in the Behavioral Health Department in 1996. DeWitt told The Times that he failed to inform the county of the felony bank fraud convictions because several years had passed and he believed that he was not obligated to report them.

The Camarillo man also lied about earning a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Kentucky, Kilbride said. DeWitt obtained a fake diploma and school transcripts purporting that he was awarded the degree in 1993, the prosecutor said.

Prosecutors say DeWitt was enrolled in the doctoral program but never completed it because he was suspended from the university for five years. Officials at the University of Kentucky would not say why the disciplinary action was taken, citing a confidentiality policy.

But Sue Kring, an official in the transcripts department, said suspensions are imposed for anything from failing to pay tuition to breaking ethical codes. His 1994 suspension made him eligible to reapply to the university in spring 1999, school officials told prosecutors.

Kilbride said DeWitt had legitimately earned a master’s degree from the University of Louisville and the deputy director’s position required only a bachelor’s degree. But he lied about the doctoral degree anyway, the prosecutor said.

“He wanted to look like a better applicant than the rest,” he said. “The other applicants were put at a disadvantage because of his lies.”

DeWitt was working as a junior loan officer at a Louisville bank in the mid-1980s when the felonies occurred. He admitted that he had written fake references on loan documents in an effort to process more loans and please his bosses. The bank lost an estimated $26 million in defaulted loans as a result of DeWitt’s actions.

Kilbride said DeWitt served 45 days in a work release program, paid a $40,000 fine and was placed on two years probation.

DeWitt’s criminal past was uncovered by FBI agents as they conducted an unrelated investigation into improper billings in the county’s Behavioral Health Department. Federal agents were trying to determine if mental health managers had deliberately defrauded the Medicare program when they found DeWitt’s rap sheet, Kilbride said.

No one is alleging that DeWitt played a role in the billing scandal, which cost the county $11 million in settlement and other payouts last year.

The district attorney’s office decided to prosecute DeWitt, however, because it is a high-profile case involving a substantial sum of money in lost wages, Kilbride said.

“If there are other persons who lied about their history, we would look at it on a case-by-case basis,” he said.

DeWitt’s fall has further demoralized a mental health department that has been in turmoil for nearly two years. DeWitt and his former boss, Stephen G. Kaplan, were ousted from the Behavioral Health Department a year ago following a failed attempt to merge the county’s mental health and social service departments. The merger spawned a series of investigations, including the Medicare probe and a state audit of mental health programs.

DeWitt found another job in the county’s Human Services Agency, where he performed special projects for Director Barbara Fitzgerald until his resignation in August. Fitzgerald has said DeWitt was an excellent employee during the five months he worked for her.

Fitzgerald and Health Care Agency Director Pierre Durand, who hired and later fired DeWitt, are expected to be called as witnesses at a preliminary hearing Jan. 26, Kilbride said.