FBI examines Wheaton day care center
By: Alan Suderman
Examiner Staff Writer
November 1, 2009
The FBI is probing a publicly funded child care center in Wheaton that has been investigated for potential fraud by Montgomery County officials, according to the head of the center.
Centro Familia Executive Director Pilar Torres said an FBI agent visited the center last week with an employee from the county Inspector General's Office.
Torres said the agent, who did not have a warrant, spoke with the center's bookkeeper and told Torres that she was visiting the center as a "routine inquiry."
"They did not explain why they were there," Torres said.
A spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore Field Office declined to comment.
Inspector General Thomas Dagley could not be reached for comment. But his office has issued reports saying the contracts worth $900,000 that the county paid the center in fiscal years 2007 and 2008 "were susceptible to abuse."
Some of the areas where Dagley's office has found problems include "transactions involving employee loans, information technology, and travel."
In response to Dagley's findings, the county's chief administrative officer, Timothy Firestine, conducted his own investigation into the center and found that there had been "several" overpayments by the county.
The center is politically connected. Its board members include state Del. Anne Kaiser, D-Montgomery County, and Lillian Cruz, an aide for Rep. Chris Van Hollen. Neither Kaiser nor Cruz could be reached for comment.
Torres and the president of Centro Familia's Board of Directors, David Anderson, have pushed back against charges of impropriety, saying the center had complied with every request by the county to show that its finances were legitimate and was being tarred by "unfounded and totally unfair innuendos."
"We are confident that there's nothing for any agency to find," Anderson said. "I don't care who it is ... they will not find fraud and abuse."
Torres and Anderson also have suggested that there is an undercurrent of racism in the inspector general and county's investigations into the center.
"There have been a number of references by the [Office of Inspector General] and [the county administrator's office] that gives an appearance of discrimination based on ethnic or national origin," Torres and Anderson wrote in a letter to the county.
County officials have denied those accusations.
