Lawsuit alleges Soraya Coley and the university have a continuous pattern of not reporting criminal wrongdoing to avoid negative publicity.
The president of Cal Poly Pomona has routinely interfered with high-profile criminal investigations at the university, including a 2017 incident when she prohibited campus police from searching a professor’s home as part of an embezzlement probe, according to a whistleblower lawsuit.
The suit, which names Coley, Cal Poly Pomona Vice President Christina Gonzales, interim university Police Chief Scott VanScoy and former California State University System Chancellor Joseph Castro as defendants, seeks $10,000 in damages for each instance of retaliation.“The university believes that the lawsuit is without merit and that the allegations substantially misrepresent the facts,” said spokesperson Cynthia A. Peters. “We have at all times operated legally, ethically and transparently.
Campus police investigators were preparing a search warrant for the professor’s home in Long Beach when Coley allegedly ordered the agency to halt its probe. From July 31, 2011, to Aug. 23, 2016, according to the report, 28 payments totaling $40,576 were reimbursed to either the employee or in the name of her husband, .
The professor used foundation funds to purchase hundreds of items that were shipped to her home, including dozens of planters, approximately 200 bags of container mix, trellises, a composter, a mulcher, canning supplies, cookbooks, a cheese-making kit, and a NutriBullet blender. Eaton recalled traveling with former university Police Chief Dario Robinson to the Long Beach home of the professor suspected of embezzlement. Their initial trip to the house was to get a legal description of the property to add to a search warrant that was expected to be served later.
Starting his career in 1991 with the Montclair Police Department and later serving 15 years with the Long Beach Police Department, Eaton came to Cal Poly Pomona in 2016 as a lieutenant. He said his experience at the university was unlike any other he had experienced working in law enforcement. Paredez stole the funds by entering her mother into the university’s processing system as a vendor at the foundation’s Kellogg West Conference Center and Hotel and used phony invoices to pay for services her mother had not performed, according to federal court records.
“Coley specifically did this because she wanted to distance herself from the situation, fearing that it may get her fired,” states the suit. “Thus, she tried to hide the fact that she was on the board of directors of the foundation at that time, and that she should have taken actions to ensure such illegal conduct did not occur.
“I feel compelled to address your characterization of my leadership style as one based on fear, as it is antithetical to my core ideals and philosophy,” she said in the email. “I am guided in this work by my beacon statement developed in my first administrative role, to remain student-centered, faculty and staff-focused, and community-minded.
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