Sheriff seeks action against operators of Mattawa daycare centers

Social services department slow in investigating payments to illegal aliens, De Trolio says

Grant County Sheriff Frank De Trolio first learned of the large number of daycare centers in the tiny town of Mattawa three years ago, just after he took office.

Now he wants everyone else to know because he feels the daycare centers have been used to shuffle hundreds of millions of dollars of public money to the illegal aliens who operate them.

De Trolio appeared on a special report on KREM2 news out of Spokane Thursday night to decry the state Department of Social Health Services' (DSHS) practice of doling out licenses to daycare providers in Mattawa.

"The main issue to us is that they're cutting our funds all over the place, yet DSHS keeps going on handing out hundreds of millions of dollars like it's out of style," De Trolio said in an interview with the Herald.

The agency has licensed 51 daycare centers in Mattawa, a town of 3,000 in the winter that grows to about 6,000 during the summer with the influx of migrant workers.

De Trolio said one legitimate daycare, run by the Migrant Workers Council, holds about 241 children, and he wonders how the town can support 50 additional daycare centers.

De Trolio told KREM2 that believes about 90 percent of those daycares are fraudulent. Many are owned by illegal aliens who use the front of a daycare to siphon money from the state, who pays licensed providers per

child for their daycares, De Trolio alleges.

Consider the case of Maria Celia de la O, the only person charged and convicted with the daycare fraud, according to De Trolio.

De la O admitted in court documents that she used another another person's Social Security card to obtain a daycare license, and she took care of children who were paid for by the state of Washington.

According to court documents, prosecutors could find no evidence de la O had cared for any children.

She was ordered to pay $241,521.83 in restitution to the Department of Social Health Services for payments made to her daycare service. De la O was convicted in February 2003, and De Trolio said she was later deported.

DSHS Secretary Dennis Braddock told the Herald that it's difficult to collect the overpayments doled out to the illicit daycare center providers. In de la O's case, the agency has not received any of the money back, and Braddock said he does not expect to see any.

"It's not easy to get a return on those dollars," he said.

De Trolio also claims the social health services department has held up the sheriff's office investigation. Only a few handfuls of files have been provided by the Department of Social Health Services, he said.

And although Mattawa and Grant County law enforcement have brought the matter to the attention of DSHS officials, payments to shady daycare centers continue, De Trolio said.

"They have to know because it's been brought to their attention too many times," De Trolio said.

Dennis Braddock, secretary of the Department of Social Health Services, said on KREM2 that his agency has cooperated as fully as it can.

Braddock questioned whether De Trolio and Grant County Prosecutor John Knodell have exhausted all means to obtain the documents he needs.

"If it's a serious case, why doesn't he subpoena us?" Braddock said on KREM2.

"That's baloney," Braddock added in an interview with the Herald. "We've given them everything they've ever asked for."

Braddock said the majority of the cases in question involved the theft of Social Security cards for the purpose of running a daycare center. In the majority of the cases, Braddock said the provider was actually taking care of children.

Subsidizing child care is one of DSHS' biggest expenses, Braddock said. The agency sends between $1 million and $1.3 million per year to the Mattawa area alone for daycare centers, he said.

Braddock said the Mattawa area sees a lot of migrants during the summer, and he believes enough children are in the town to fill most of the daycare centers.

According to a fact sheet supplied to the Herald by DSHS spokeswoman Kathy Spears, the agency has handed over documents related to 29 of the daycare providers in Mattawa, which include numerous pages, to Grant

County law-enforcement agencies.

It takes the agency about 60 hours to review a large case to determine whether overpayment occurred, and 37 hours to review a small case, according to the document.

DSHS is in the process of attempting to recover $120,000 in apparen overpayments to child-care facilities in Mattawa, according to the document.

The Division of Fraud Investigations has referred 39 cases in Mattawa for potential overpayment to daycare providers, and the agency has established 16 cases where overpayment occurred, according to the fact sheet. Ten of those cases have been forwarded to the Grant County Sheriff's Office for joint investigation with the Division of Fraud Investigations, according to the fact sheet.

But De Trolio wants to see a little more activity because, as he sees it, Washington state is violating federal law by making these payments to illegal aliens.

"I want to see a change because there's not any doubt in my mind that we're sending a lot of money out of the country," De Trolio said.