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.”