Police say Meyers had many identities
Andrew Glazer
COSTA MESA -- Authorities said they have strong evidence that the
recently fired executive director of the Costa Mesa Senior Center also
was sentenced to five years in federal prison for robbing and choking a
psychiatrist he had reportedly been impersonating.
The center’s board of directors fired Alan M. Meyers on Tuesday for
allegedly using false credentials to get hired.
Police investigators, health clinics and state health investigators up
and down the West Coast believe they have encountered Meyers, who
allegedly stenciled diplomas, manufactured resumes and stole money and
identities for decades.
Costa Mesa police are investigating whether the senior center board hired
Meyers based on a bogus professional background.
He was arrested as recently as December by Anaheim police for allegedly
embezzling thousands of dollars from a nonprofit medical clinic in
Oregon, said Klamath County Sheriff’s Deputy Bud Wilson.
Meyers is scheduled to go to trial June 14 in Klamath County for
allegedly stealing money from the Klamath Open Door Family Practice
Clinic.
Meyers could not be reached for comment, but in published reports has
denied any wrongdoing in the Klamath County case.
Wilson also said he believed this is the same Alan M. Meyers who was
convicted of bigamy in Stanislaus County, Calif., in 1991.
According to a Klamath Falls police report, Meyers has assumed the
identity of as many as five different actual physicians in Washington
state, Oregon, several cities in Southern California and Washington, D.C.
In February 1999, Meyers -- then executive director of an Oregon
nonprofit medical and dental clinic serving mostly poor migrant workers
-- allegedly submitted a phony expense form for $8,500, according to
Klamath County court documents. Meyers told officials the expense report
reflected the cost of moving to southern Oregon from a home in Anaheim,
said Brian Harris, deputy executive director for the Klamath Open Door
Family Practice Clinic.
However, investigators found that no moving company had touched Meyers’
belongings, according to a Klamath County Sheriff’s Department report.
Meyers also spent several hundred dollars on flights to Ontario, Calif.,
under the guise of attending medical conferences in Seattle, the police
report said.
And in a routine background check, Klamath County deputies believe they
have evidence suggesting Meyers used the alias Carmi Bar-Ilan. Bar-Ilan
impersonated Dr. Peter Polatin, a psychiatrist in Washington, D.C., and
was convicted of armed robbery.
Beginning in 1976 -- identifying himself as Polatin -- Bar-Ilan worked
for more than a year as a staff psychiatrist at Patton State Hospital in
San Bernardino County, according to reports published in 1978 in the
Washington Post and Newsweek magazine.
According to published reports, after some time Patton Hospital officials
sent doctors a memo reminding them to update their medical licenses.
Bar-Ilan called the real Polatin at his office, inviting him to lunch to
discuss a job offering. Bar-Ilan flew to the nation’s capital, met
Polatin at his car, drove with him for a while and then jumped into the
back seat and tried to strangle him.
Polatin escaped and Bar-Ilan fled. But after two weeks, California police
arrested him and he was eventually convicted in federal court of armed
robbery. Bar-Ilan was sentenced to five years, but served 15 months in a
federal prison in Littleton, Colo.
At that time, investigators found embossing machines with the logos of
the University of Michigan and Jerusalem’s Hebrew University in
Bar-Ilan’s home, along with sheets of bogus stationary, according to the
published reports.
Resumes Meyers sent to the Costa Mesa Senior Center and the Community
Action Committee in Pasco, Wash., list very different professional
histories. But both claim he received social work and psychology degrees
from the University of Michigan.
“We learned the lesson of how important it is to double-check everyone’s
resume’,” said Harris of the Klamath clinic. “It should just be standard
practice.”
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