Inside the Sheriff Department’s secretive investigation into oversight officials

A multi-year criminal investigation under former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva into the agency’s inspector general — a probe that a legal advisor for the county called “not legally viable” — was based largely on unfounded accusations that state and federal prosecutors repeatedly turned down, documents reviewed by The Times show.

Villanueva long used the case to try to discredit the county watchdog, regularly referring to Inspector General Max Huntsman as a “felony suspect” and asking county officials to remove him from the job at least twice. At one point, Villanueva cited the probe as part of the justification to lock Huntsman out of department databases.

But in May prosecutors with the state Department of Justice quietly notified the Sheriff’s Department in a memo that they would not file criminal charges in the investigation launched in 2019.

The department has never fully explained the allegations against Huntsman and four other people named as suspects. But an 80-page Sheriff’s Department report recently reviewed by The Times — part of a more than 300-page investigative case file — shows investigators relentlessly pursued a probe focused on supposedly stolen records and document leaks.

Inspector General Max Huntsman listens to former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s testimony.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

The criminal investigation began soon after Villanueva took office, when his transition team noticed “abnormalities” while reviewing personnel records, according to the report. In early 2019, the sheriff’s chief of staff asked internal criminal investigators to look into it, and in 2021 the department sent the case file to state prosecutors.

One prong of the investigation focused on Huntsman’s concerns that some personnel files, including Villanueva’s, were being kept secret from oversight officials. The department eventually agreed to turn them over, only to investigate Huntsman for obtaining them, the report shows.

The investigation also included allegations that oversight officials, as well as the former LASD constitutional policing advisor, Diana Teran, stole records of Villanueva and his top associates. Oversight officials have said they were entitled to access confidential personnel files as part of their jobs, and there is no evidence in the report that any of the files, downloaded in 2018, were leaked to the press or improperly used.

The meandering report likens the alleged theft of Sheriff’s Department personnel records to pilfering from a McDonald’s charitable donation box or stealing the recipe for Coca-Cola. In some instances, the report points to the number or frequency of downloads as evidence of wrongdoing. In one case, an oversight official’s decision to search eight files in one day is framed as a possible criminal violation.

Because of the unusual nature of the case, at one point lawyers for the county sought an outside legal opinion. Retired federal prosecutor Lawrence Middleton warned them in 2020 that the department could be “putting its employees in jeopardy by pursuing a criminal investigation that, in my view, is not legally viable.”

The last time the department “decided to investigate its investigators,” Middleton continued, it “did not end well for the department.” That was an apparent reference to a decade-old scandal in which Sheriff Lee Baca and other top officials were convicted in a scheme to obstruct an FBI investigation of abuses in county jails.

The Sheriff’s Department dismissed Middleton’s legal opinion, characterizing it in its report as a “clear and unambiguous threat” against those doing the investigating.

The department recently confirmed that its investigation is now closed and said there was “no additional information” to release.

“Our current administration operates distinctively from its predecessor,” the department wrote in an emailed statement. “Actions taken in prior administrations do not reflect our current policies or practices.”

In an emailed response Thursday, Villanueva said, “we never presented the case to feds or the state, merely asked for their assistance.” He did not respond to specific questions, accused a reporter of a crime and said lawyers for the county had been “trying to obstruct the case at every step.” The state Department of Justice said it was “unable to comment on investigations, closed or open.”

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Peace officer personnel records historically have been tightly protected from disclosure under state law and department policy. But a long-standing written agreement between the department and the Office of Inspector General permits oversight officials to review certain confidential files as part of their duties, which include monitoring deputy disciplinary cases, shootings and jail conditions.

In the fall of 2018, Office of Inspector General attorney Bita Shasty noticed that a case file she’d seen before seemed to have vanished. She emailed Teran — then at the Sheriff’s Department — to ask if she remembered the case or knew why the file wouldn’t show up.

“It’s really weird,” Shasty wrote. “I am trying to see if you tried to pull up the case if it will come up for you. Please let me know.”

About 20 minutes later, Teran explained that the file might not be visible if it had been marked private for a “sensitive” investigation. “If it is private to IAB [internal affairs] it is so others in the department can’t pull it up,” she wrote, “but I am sure they are good with OIG having [a] copy.”

The following day, the report said, a higher-ranking oversight official spoke with LASD Internal Affairs Bureau Capt. Josie Woolum about the hidden files. Woolum later emailed her assistant to recap the conversation, explaining that she’d told the Office of Inspector General there were 54 “Private to IAB” files and that there was no formal process to decide which ones would be marked private.

“Any executive, or I, can decide to do so for a number of business reasons,” she wrote.

A day later, Huntsman sent a letter to then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell to say he hadn’t known the department could obscure such files from oversight officials. He said he understood that the agreement signed years earlier gave oversight officials complete access to department personnel records, and that hiding files was “contrary to the intent” of the agreement.

“I request that you provide the Office of the Inspector General complete and full access,” he added.

For the next few weeks, officials went back and forth about the files. Finally, in late November 2018, the report says, Huntsman emailed Teran and his No. 2, Dan Baker, about the records. “Diana has permission from the sheriff (McDonnell) to give us the files we seek,” he wrote. “Please provide her a hard drive so she can download them.”

Teran responded: “Just to be clear, I was only authorized to provide the files in closed cases, not pending.”

Citing unspecified “various laws,” the report alleges that even as sheriff, McDonnell didn’t have the authority to allow the sharing of those files. At one point, the report says that when investigators tried to interview McDonnell, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Elsewhere, the report says that it wasn’t clear if he invoked that right or “simply didn’t want to cooperate.” McDonnell — whose administration had long been a target of Villanueva’s criticism — declined to comment.

In early December 2018 — after several weeks of emails, calls and meetings between oversight and sheriff’s officials — Woolum emailed the files to Baker. Even though the department had ultimately turned over the records willingly, the report alleges the Woolum had been “duped,” but didn’t provide any evidence of that.

In an interview Thursday, Woolum said “there’s no way I would’ve been duped.”

“If I provided any information to OIG or any other outside entity, it would’ve been within the normal scope of business, or it would have been at the direction of someone above me,” she added.

She didn’t remember specific details about the exchange of files, but said she was never interviewed by Lillienfeld at the time. “That is a huge piece that is missing,” she said. “It’s basic investigation 101. He missed a great opportunity to get the facts.”

In an emailed statement this week, the department said that under Sheriff Robert Luna, oversight officials have full access to the agency’s personnel database, including files marked private.

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At that point, McDonnell was no longer sheriff; Villanueva had been sworn into office two days earlier. In the weeks before he took the helm of the Sheriff’s Department, some officials — including Huntsman — had begun to worry the new sheriff would destroy or alter records.

That concern was exacerbated when Villanueva’s incoming chief of staff requested that Chief Alicia Ault — who oversaw the department’s professional standards division — reinstate a fired deputy and alter his disciplinary record. Ault said in a deposition in a civil case that she was told he wanted it done before Villanueva took office so it would appear to have been done by McDonnell’s administration.

Ault quit over what she described at the time as a “highly unethical” demand.

“Our reason for getting those files was, in part, to be sure the Sheriff’s Dept. complied with the law,” Huntsman told The Times this month. “We were concerned that there might be an attempt to alter government records, and we wanted to obtain a copy so that we would be able to provide proof to anybody later.”

In 2018, department officials created a secret audit tool that would allow them to track who accessed personnel files — including outside oversight officials.

Over the next 11 months, the sheriff’s report says, that auditing tool showed that Office of Inspector General officials downloaded an “extraordinary number” of items — 1,500 — from the department’s database of personnel files. Huntsman said that number was not surprising “because that was precisely our job.”

According to the report, Shasty accessed the files of nine current or former sheriff’s officials on Nov. 28, 2018. In the following days, she reviewed more files, and on Dec. 1, she downloaded dozens of cases involving people Villanueva was planning to promote or rehire. Shasty downloaded or accessed some of those same personnel files again on Jan. 2.

This engendered suspicion among Sheriff’s Department investigators, according to their report.

There was “no reasonable or legitimate explanation” for Shasty to query certain files because she had looked them up a month earlier, the report said. In another instance, the report states that none of the people whose files Shasty accessed was under “any type of investigation” at the time, making it a violation of the memorandum of agreement to access them, as well as a violation of California government code and “likely” California bar ethics rules.

Shasty declined to comment.

The report doesn’t present any clear allegations that the records Shasty accessed were misused or leaked.

Teran, meanwhile, downloaded dozens of case files on at least three separate occasions, including on June 5, 2018, the day of the primary election, and Dec. 2, 2018, her last day working for the Sheriff’s Department, according to the report.

The report equates the file downloads to the theft of “trade secrets,” arguing that the “economic value” to news reporters who obtained them would be “incalculable.”

“If disclosed or published contrary to law, for a non-legitimate purpose, (to sell newspapers or gain viewers to a website or broadcast) these files and the information they contain could cause irreparable harm, to not only the subject whose personnel file was breached but victims, witnesses, informants, and other stakeholders in the criminal justice system,” the report says.

The report presents no evidence that any of the downloads was shared with the media or improperly made public.

Even though California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta eventually rejected the case the Sheriff’s Department sent him, this year he charged Teran in a separate case featuring similar allegations. His office says the two are unrelated.

In the new case, Bonta has alleged that after Teran left the Sheriff’s Department and began working for the L.A. County district attorney’s office, she illegally used confidential records of about 11 sheriff’s deputies when she flagged their names for inclusion in a database of problem officers.

Teran’s attorney, James Spertus, has said that his client did nothing wrong and that the records in question were already public in existing court filings.

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After Villanueva took office, his transition team started reviewing personnel records to decide which deputies to rehire and noticed the “abnormalities” — leading to the investigation and allegations that Teran had downloaded confidential personnel records.

Sheriff’s Department investigators tried to figure out whether any had been leaked to the media by going through more than 2,500 emails. The report says they found none of the emails contained unlawfully obtained data.

In April 2019, the department brought its findings to the FBI and the state attorney general’s office. Federal and state officials concluded no crimes had been committed and told sheriff’s officials they wouldn’t take on the investigation.

Still, Villanueva’s investigators pressed ahead. By August, the internal criminal investigators handling the case had terminated their inquiry and the matter was turned over to veteran department homicide investigator Mark Lillienfeld — who had been rehired out of retirement and became a key member of a new public corruption unit that critics said targeted the sheriff’s political enemies.

But Lillienfeld had a fraught history with the department. In 2018, after he had retired and begun working for the district attorney’s office, sheriff’s officials banned him from all county lockups because he was caught on camera posing as a deputy and sneaking into Men’s Central Jail. The Times first reported the story in October 2019, as Lillienfeld’s investigation began ramping up. This week, he did not respond to a request for comment from The Times.

Retired L.A. County sheriff’s homicide Det. Mark Lillienfeld enters Men’s Central Jail in a deputy’s uniform and leaves a plastic bag and cup in the inmate chapel.

At some point the investigation expanded beyond its initial line of inquiry into Teran’s downloads and began probing other questions — both about the “Private to IAB” files and about a list of problem deputies leaked to a Los Angeles Times reporter.

Meanwhile, Villanueva said publicly that he had recused himself from the matter and had put Undersheriff Tim Murakami in charge of the case. In August 2019, Murakami announced the investigation in a letter to the Board of Supervisors.

Despite the FBI’s prior lack of interest in the case, Lillienfeld and his lieutenant met for two hours in October 2019 with FBI officials and then-federal prosecutor Brandon Fox to press their case against Teran, Huntsman and others.

After hearing the allegations, Fox told investigators he felt there were clearly “no violations of federal law presented” and asked the detectives if they wanted a declination letter from his office, according to a supplemental report in the case file. The sheriff’s investigators declined, saying in the report they weren’t seeking an opinion but instead advising the FBI in case agents wanted to take over the investigation, and ensuring there was no conflict.

Then in March 2020, lawyers for the county got the opinion from Middleton.

He wrote that the perception that the investigation was aimed at intimidating and obstructing the Office of Inspector General’s probe into the department “will only grow stronger if the investigation continues even after the Department has been advised that there likely are no viable criminal charges.”

The following month, Murakami complained to the U.S. Department of Justice about the perceived “threat” from Middleton. He said he would shut down the investigation if it was hampering any work the FBI or Department of Justice was doing.

In a response, then-U.S. Atty. Nicola Hanna said Middleton was retired and did not speak for his office.

“I unfortunately cannot provide you with an advisory opinion as to whether any member of your Department is violating obstruction of justice laws in carrying out the investigation you describe,” Hanna continued.

That October, Lillienfeld and another lieutenant met with a special agent in charge at the FBI, according to another report in the case file. The pair wanted to team up or hand off all their materials to the FBI. The FBI agent declined the offers.

The following year, in November 2021, the department again sent the case to Bonta’s office, describing it as a “long-term criminal inquiry that began in 2017” and had established “ample evidence of unlawful conduct” including theft, burglary, receiving stolen property and other crimes. Despite the previous disinterest, in early 2022 Bonta’s office responded with a short letter agreeing to review the case.

This year state prosecutors formally declined to file charges, according to a three-sentence letter reviewed by The Times from Chief Assistant Atty. Gen. Lance Winters to Sheriff Robert Luna.

“We have completed our review, and we have declined to file any charges,” Winters wrote.

It’s unclear why it took Bonta’s office more than two years to reject it. In an emailed statement early Thursday, the state Department of Justice said only that it did a “thorough investigation” and ultimately “found insufficient evidence to warrant criminal charges.”

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It’s highly unusual for law enforcement officials to openly discuss ongoing corruption probes, especially before there are charges filed.

But throughout his term as sheriff, Villanueva trumpeted details of the case, even though he claimed he’d recused himself.

“People got caught with their hands in the cookie jar,” he said in September 2020 on Facebook Live. “It turns out I was one of 22 employees, where their files were illegally accessed and downloaded. When you illegally access them, that’s a misdemeanor crime. When you download them, and remove them, then it becomes a felony. This happened 2,400 times.”

He went on to say: “These files, as they were downloaded, they started appearing in the media. Gee, I wonder how.”

The long-running investigation, he said, has “just led to a lot, and they keep discovering more, they keep investigating more. And I’m not even part of that process, definitely not, I have recused myself.”

Lillienfeld left the department after Luna took office in late 2022. The department has declined to answer specific questions about the probe, noting that the investigation took place under a prior administration and officials turned the matter over to the state in 2021.

To Huntsman, it’s been disappointing to see a department that was once so eager to publicly flaunt the case against him now so tight-lipped about its conclusion.

“When the AG told LASD they wouldn’t be prosecuting the inspector general, LASD kept it a secret,” he said.

In fact, Huntsman added, he has never officially been informed by the department or the attorney general’s office that he’s no longer a criminal suspect.