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Hiring practices reworked at UCLA

By Shaun Bishop

July 4, 2005 9:00 p.m.

UCLA has implemented changes to its policies on background
checks for potential employees following the arrest of a man found
to be working at the university under an alias to hide his criminal
past.

Freddrick Brito, who went under the alias Federiqkoe DiBritto at
UCLA, was arrested April 8 for a violation of his parole by not
reporting a previous felony.

Brito had been working since October 2004 under an
“at-will” contract ““ meaning either party could
terminate the employment at any time ““ as the executive
director of development and patient relations for the digestive
diseases division in the David Geffen School of Medicine.

Following his arrest, UCLA ended the contract April 21, said
university spokesman Lawrence Lokman.

In response to the incident, UCLA Human Resources issued a memo
last week mandating fingerprinting and criminal background checks
for all employees hired through the university’s external
affairs division, under which Brito was employed. The university is
now focused on implementing the new policy, Lokman said.

Previously, background checks were only performed on candidates
for positions deemed “critical,” such as those with
direct access to university funds or those with master keys to
buildings.

In changing its hiring policies, the university hopes to
“prevent an exceptional circumstance (such as Brito’s)
from becoming anything other than an exception,” Lokman
said.

Lokman said he was not aware of any other UCLA divisions
changing their hiring policies in response to Brito’s arrest,
but he said a campus-wide audit of human-resources policies was
initiated six months ago independently of the recent situation and
was still in progress. He said he didn’t know whether recent
events would influence the rest of the campus’ background
check procedures.

Employees in external affairs, the university’s
fund-raising and public relations branch, are especially subject to
reassignment during the course of their employment, which
influenced the division’s decision to require background
checks for all of those employees, Lokman said.

Vice Chancellor of External Affairs Michael Eicher sent an
e-mail memo to external affairs employees informing them of
imminent changes to the hiring policies on June 17, about a week
after the Daily Bruin’s June 9 report of Brito’s arrest
and dismissal from the university.

In the memo, Eicher said he was “deeply troubled that
someone would misrepresent himself in this way.”

“We hold an important public trust, and I take seriously
my responsibility to minimize the risk that someone in our
organization will compromise the university or behave in ways that
are illegal or unethical,” he wrote.

Eicher, along with Lokman, pointed to the university’s
outsourcing of reference checks on Brito to an outside firm,
Askanas Consulting, as a component of the situation.

“That was the first time the university has used them and
I don’t suspect we’ll probably be using them in the
future,” said university spokeswoman Carol Stogsdill.

Leslie Askanas, president of the consulting firm, did not return
an e-mail seeking comment.

Brito was in charge of fund-raising operations and had access to
donor information, including addresses and contact information.

He had used several different names and held positions in a
variety of fields before coming to UCLA, including executive
director of the National Kidney Foundation of Southern California,
a Catholic priest in Arizona, and psychiatrist for a Los Angeles
County public defender, according to published reports.

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