The Brief

The FBI has been conducting a criminal investigation into the Santa Ana Unified School District's agreements with several companies that provided weekly COVID-19 testing to students and staff during the pandemic, according to documents obtained by LAist.

The contract at the center of the FBI inquiry, for the 2021-2022 school year, was among the largest pandemic-era school testing contracts in the state. It was worth well over $100 million, according to an estimate given to independent investigators in a separate wide-ranging investigation, and LAist calculations. The testing was billed by the contractor directly to the federal government and private insurance companies.

Santa Ana Unified is the second-largest school district in Orange County, with about 44,000 students and 5,000 employees.

A federal subpoena reviewed by LAist targets records from the COVID-19 testing operation dating back to Aug. 1, 2021. The documents sought included communications, billing records and contracts with businesses owned by Todd Ament, and other businesses for which he served as a contact with the district, according to the subpoena and documents obtained by LAist from the district.

Ament was a key figure in a recent, wide-ranging government corruption scandal in Anaheim.

He was a major player in Anaheim politics who led the city's chamber of commerce before he was indicted on a variety of corruption charges and pleaded guilty to several counts of fraud in 2022.

In federal wiretaps conducted as part of that previous investigation, Ament described himself as part of a “cabal” of elected officials, political consultants, and business leaders that worked covertly to influence Anaheim politics. An FBI investigator described him in an affidavit as a “ringleader” of the group.

Three months before the Santa Ana Unified school board approved a no-bid contract with a company tied to Ament, the district got 18 bids from other firms in response to a request for proposals for COVID-19 testing. The district scrapped that effort after the winning bidder sought to renegotiate some of the terms.

Then, shortly before the school year started, Anza Vang, an executive with the Orange County Health Care Agency, recommended Ament to the school district as a testing partner, according to documents obtained by LAist.

A spokesperson for the Orange County Health Care Agency, Ellen Guevara, told LAist in an email that the testing laboratory that got the contract, Diagnostic Laboratory Science (DLS), "was one of a limited number of vendors at the time that were able to offer robust COVID-19 testing.” Ament helped broker the deal with DLS, according to district documents.

Representatives of DLS did not respond to requests for comment.

Several representatives for the school district told LAist the state Attorney General's office is also actively investigating the testing operation. The AG’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Fraud and COVID-19

The investigations into COVID-19 testing operations at Santa Ana Unified are a small snapshot of potential ethical and legal problems that occurred during the pandemic as unprecedented sums of money flowed from the federal government to address the public health emergency.

Isaac Bledsoe, an investigator with the U.S. Office of Inspector General for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, told LAist the amount of money defrauded nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic from patients and the federal government was "definitely hundreds of millions of dollars."

And it's still happening. The watchdog agency's most recent enforcement action related to COVID-19 fraud was in April of 2023.

Jodi Balma, a political science professor at Fullerton College who watches Orange County closely, said "the full report of misspending of COVID dollars has not begun to be written."

She and others told LAist that the pandemic caused many public agencies to bypass some accountability standards to rapidly respond to the changing emergency.

"We just don't have a procedure to guard against corruption, have transparency, and also go that quick," Balma said.

The Anaheim backstory

The documents LAist obtained from the district provide new details about Ament's involvement in securing a COVID-19 testing contract for his own and other businesses. Ament's company, alternately called Accurate Health Partners or Accurate Diagnostic Partners, coordinated the testing and delivered swabs to the lab for analysis.

The documents also provide insights into accusations that Ament sought to illegally profit off of the contract in the form of "kickbacks," as alleged in a recent investigation ordered by the city of Anaheim.

Ament's wife, Lea Ament, a nurse and former local hospital executive, was also involved in the school district's testing operation through her husband’s company and another company, Care One Health Partners, according to school district documents. Until recently, Lea Ament was listed as the secretary of Care One Health Partners on business documents filed with the California Secretary of State.

For years, Todd Ament played an outsized role in Anaheim politics before pleading guilty to federal criminal charges for defrauding a cannabis company, using federal COVID-19 business relief funds for personal expenses, and lying on his tax return.

None of those crimes appear to be connected to the Santa Ana Unified contracts. Todd Ament’s guilty pleas in the Anaheim probe pre-date subpoenas in the FBI’s Santa Ana inquiry.

The initial criminal complaint against Todd Ament in the Anaheim case was filed in May 2022 and noted that he had begun cooperating with the federal government. He has yet to be sentenced.

Todd Ament did not respond to multiple calls and emails requesting comment for this story. Daniel Silva, who is listed as Ament's lawyer in recent court filings, also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Reached by phone, Lea Ament declined to comment.

Providers set up to test students and staff of Santa Ana Unified for COVID-19 during the 2021-2022 school year.

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Santa Ana Unified, as part of a public records request

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Where the Santa Ana Unified inquiry stands

It's unclear where the investigations by the FBI and the California Attorney General’s office stand. Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office, which subpoenaed the records, said the agency could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. A spokesperson for the FBI also said they could not comment and could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.

Lawyers, administrators, and current school board members for Santa Ana Unified said they could not comment because of the investigations.

The documents LAist obtained through a public records request reveal details behind allegations made during an independent corruption investigation ordered in 2022 by the Anaheim City Council. That investigation came in the wake of a federal probe and included allegations of potential improprieties in the award and administration of the lucrative COVID-19 testing contract with the Santa Ana Unified School District for the 2021-2022 school year.

In their final report, released in late July of 2023, the Anaheim investigators included portions of interviews with sources alleging that Todd Ament used "behind the scenes" influence to obtain a COVID-19 testing contract with Santa Ana Unified and then sought kickbacks from the deal for him and his wife, Lea Ament.

Eric Morgan, a representative of Diagnostic Laboratory Science (DLS), which initially held the school testing contract, told the investigators the contract was worth an estimated $128 million. Morgan estimated Todd Ament made $20-30 million from the district testing operation.

According to the new documents obtained by LAist, as well as testimony cited in the Anaheim corruption report, Todd Ament helped broker a no-bid contract for weekly COVID-19 testing of students and staff for the 2021-2022 school year on behalf of DLS, an established local laboratory.

The documents show that companies headed by Todd Ament and Lea Ament organized and oversaw the ordering and collection of saliva and nasal swabs for COVID-19 testing, and the delivery of those tests to the lab for analysis.

An internal memo from the school district, written two days after Todd Ament was charged with unrelated federal crimes, described his role as "a 3rd party COVID testing vendor and laboratory contact for DLS and MEDLAB2020." MedLab2020 succeeded DLS in analyzing COVID-19 tests for the district.

How the documents intersect with the Anaheim investigation

The independent corruption investigation commissioned by the Anaheim City Council in August 2022 and released in late July 2023 included allegations by people involved in Santa Ana Unified’s COVID-19 testing operation regarding Todd Ament’s role in securing and administering the contract.

In their final report, investigators noted that Todd Ament "seemed to vanish" from the Anaheim political scene around the beginning of 2021. Witnesses told investigators that he saw lucrative business opportunities in COVID-19 testing as businesses and schools began to reopen, according to the corruption report.

Two brothers, Firas and Moe Tamary, told investigators that they hired Todd Ament as a consultant for DLS for about three months at the beginning of 2021. Both Tamarys are listed as agents for DLS with the California Secretary of State.

They told investigators that Ament then quit his consulting job with them to start up his own business, Accurate Diagnostic Partners (previously known as Accurate Health Partners). According to the report, Accurate Diagnostic Partners administered COVID-19 tests and collected swabs to be delivered to DLS for testing.

Firas Tamary told investigators that Todd Ament claimed to have an "inside connection" at Santa Ana Unified and assured them they would get approval for a COVID-19 testing contract from the district's board of education.

Firas Tamary also told investigators that he and his brother agreed with Ament on a fixed price they would pay him per swab collected, based on the Medicare reimbursement rate. Tamary told investigators that at one point Todd Ament asked for a higher rate, but the Tamary brothers told him that would be considered “a kickback” and was against the law, according to the report.

A shift to another lab shortly after district approval

According to the final report of the Anaheim investigation, the Tamarys said that Todd Ament claimed to have a better offer from another lab and tried to pressure DLS to pay him more. Firas Tamary said they declined, telling Todd Ament that paying him above the set reimbursement rate would violate several state and federal laws.

That's when, Firas Tamary told investigators, Todd Ament "basically stole" the Santa Ana Unified contract from DLS and "found a different lab to work with," according to the report.

LAist reached out to Moe Tamary, Firas Tamary and Eric Morgan via phone and email to request comment on this story. They did not respond to multiple requests.

Shortly after the district's school board approved the COVID-19 testing contract with DLS, documents obtained by LAist show that Todd Ament began work to get the contract reassigned to a different lab: MedLab2020, whose CEO is Matthew Collins, according to business documents filed with the California Secretary of State. Collins did not respond to multiple requests for comment from LAist for this story.

Firas Tamary signed the reassignment agreement on Sept. 17, 2021, the district records show.

According to the criminal complaint filed against Todd Ament for his role in the Anaheim corruption scandal, Ament started cooperating with the FBI on Sept. 14, 2021.

On Sept. 28, 2021, Todd Ament wrote to the district's head of risk management, Dr. Sara Nazir, saying he wanted to discuss a revision to the contract that would assign all rights and responsibilities for COVID-19 testing of students and staff to MedLab2020. He also included a new paragraph in the contract that would officially list his company, Accurate Diagnostic Partners, as a subcontractor for the first time, according to school district records.

LAist was unable to find any record of the Santa Ana Unified school board approving the contract reassignment. An LAist review of board meeting agendas through January 2022 did not turn up any items related to the contract reassignment.

John Palacio, the former Santa Ana Unified trustee who was on the school board at the time, told LAist he was unaware of the contract reassignment. "And that is of serious concern to me as a board member because they [district staff] have an obligation to inform the board, especially about something as significant as that contract," Palacio said.

Palacio also said he had never heard of Todd Ament, or his involvement in the testing contract, until contacted by LAist for this story.

District emails obtained by LAist show Palacio questioned district administrators about why the district hadn't gone out to bid for the contract, how testing companies would be paid, and whether the district had a budget for supporting the testing operation with staff and other logistics.

He told LAist that district administrators told him at the time that the contract was no-cost and therefore didn't need to be put out for competitive bidding, and that testing would be paid, as the contract states, through private insurance or through the federal CARES Act. Palacio said his other questions went largely unanswered.

Fermin Leal, a spokesperson for the district, told LAist that current school board members and staff could not comment on the matter because of the ongoing investigation.

The roles of Lea Ament and others

Morgan, the DLS representative, told the Anaheim investigators that Care One Health Partners was in charge of ordering the COVID-19 tests that were administered to Santa Ana Unified students and staff. Documents obtained by LAist show that Care One Health Partners also acted as an intermediary between insurance companies and students and staff to help troubleshoot billing problems.

Lea Ament identifies herself in district documents obtained by LAist as the chief operating officer of Care One Health Partners, even though documents filed with the Secretary of State during the time of the contract identify her as the secretary of the company.

In emails obtained by LAist, Lea Ament also identifies herself as president of her husband's company, Accurate Health Care, which was coordinating testing for the district. She is not listed as an officer of the company on records filed with the Secretary of State.

Lea Ament was previously executive director of cancer services at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, but she left in 2021, according to a hospital spokesperson.

Dr. Albert Lai, a pain medicine doctor based in Placentia, is listed in records filed with the Secretary of State as the chief executive officer of Care One Health Partners. Lai did not respond to messages seeking comment left at his office and other phone numbers listed for him.

Morgan told Anaheim investigators that approximately 1 million tests would be ordered under the contract and Care One Health Partners would charge approximately $68 per test. He told investigators that Lea Ament would receive half of the money from every test.

"Todd's wife somehow, even though there were doctors' names on everything, worked out where she got fifty percent of all the profits for Care One and obviously, he [Todd Ament] owned Accurate, so he was dipping into multiple places," Morgan told investigators, according to their report.

Lai did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Kris Murray, a former member of the Anaheim City Council who runs a consulting firm, was also involved in the testing operation at Santa Ana Unified. Murray developed FAQs about the testing program and communicated with students and staff about insurance problems on behalf of the Aments' companies and the district, documents show.

Murray did not respond to LAist's requests for comment. It was not immediately clear who hired her to do the work and how much she was paid.

The end of the lucrative contract

On May 16, 2022, the federal government filed a criminal complaint against Todd Ament, detailing allegations that he defrauded a cannabis company, used federal COVID-19 business relief funds for personal expenses, and falsified tax returns.

Two days later, on May 18, 2022, Santa Ana Unified staff sent an internal memo informing district administrators of the charges against Todd Ament. They also stated that Collins, the CEO of MedLab2020, told the district he had bought Accurate Health Partners from Todd Ament the week prior, and that Todd Ament would not have a role in the company going forward.

In the Anaheim corruption report, Morgan, the DLS representative, told investigators he heard Collins had bought Todd Ament's company for $10 million.

The district signed a new contract with MedLab2020 in the spring of 2022 to provide weekly COVID-19 testing to students and staff in the 2022-2023 school year. This time, the district was responsible for paying the company for staff testing, according to the contract obtained by LAist, but not for student testing, which would continue to be billed to students' insurance companies or to federal pandemic relief programs.

At the start of the 2022-2023 school year, Santa Ana Unified dropped its mandate that all students and staff be tested weekly for COVID-19, instead making the testing voluntary.

MedLab2020 provided voluntary testing until the district received the federal government's subpoena on Feb. 6, 2023. In an email sent the next day, Nazir — who headed the school district's risk management department and oversaw COVID-19 testing for the district — advised that she was suspending MedLab2020 from conducting further COVID-19 tests on campus.

Fermin Leal, the district’s spokesperson, told LAist that the district gradually shifted from in-person testing to providing at-home testing kits to students and staff during the 2022-2023 school year. Leal said those who wanted in-person testing were referred to community providers.

By then, vaccines were widely available and the chaos of the early pandemic days were behind school administrators.

LAist reviewed details of the Santa Ana Unified COVID-19 testing agreements with Jose Moreno, a former Anaheim city council member. Moreno has criticized the influence of Anaheim's business elite — which has often been behind closed doors — over public policymaking in recent years.

"It's not surprising," Moreno said of Todd Ament's involvement in the highly lucrative no-bid contract.

"Anytime there's public dollars that are supposed to help people, we see the same pigs at the trough," he said.

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024

Nearly every student in the California State University system has used artificial intelligence tools, but most don’t trust the results, are worried about how AI will affect their future job security and want more say in systemwide AI policy.

That’s according to results of a 2025 survey of more than 80,000 students enrolled at CSU’s 22 campuses, plus faculty and staff — the largest and most comprehensive study of how higher education students and instructors perceive artificial intelligence.

Nationwide, university faculty struggle to reconcile the learning benefits of AI — hailed as a “transformative tool” for providing tutoring and personalized support to students — and the risks that students will depend on AI agents to do their thinking for them and, very possibly, get the wrong information. Educators want a say in how and which AI tools are used. Students across the CSU system want to be included in those discussions.

Some professors teach students how to use AI and encourage students to use it, while others forbid its use in the classroom, said Katie Karroum, vice president of systemwide affairs for the Cal State Student Association, representing more than 470,000 students.

“Both of these things are allowed to coexist right now without a policy,” she said.

Karroum said that faculty practices are too varied and that what students need are consistent and transparent rules developed in collaboration with students. “There are going to be students who are graduating with AI literacy and some that graduate without AI literacy.”

In February 2025, the CSU system announced an initiative to adopt AI technologies and an agreement with OpenAI to make ChatGPT available throughout the system. The system-wide survey released Wednesday confirms that ChatGPT is the most used AI tool across CSUs. The system will also work with Adobe, Google, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft and NVIDIA.

Campus leaders say the survey and accompanying dashboard provide much needed data on how the system continues to integrate AI into instruction and assessment.

“We need to have data to make data-informed decisions instead of just going by anecdote,” said Elisa Sobo, a professor of anthropology at San Diego State who was involved in interpreting the survey’s findings. “We have data that show high use, but we also have high levels of concern, very valid concern, to help people be responsible when they use it.”

Faculty at San Diego State designed the survey, which received more than 94,000 responses from students, faculty and staff. Among all responding CSU students, 95% reported using an AI tool; 84% said they used ChatGPT and 82% worry that AI will negatively impact their future job security. Others worry that they won’t be competitive if they don’t understand AI well enough.

“Even though I don’t want to use it, I HAVE TO!” wrote a computer science major. “Because if I don’t, then I’ll be left behind, and that is the last thing someone would want in this stupid job market.”

Faculty are divided about the impact of AI on teaching and research. Just over 55% reported a positive benefit, while 52% said AI has had a negative impact so far.

San Diego State conducted its first campuswide survey in 2023 in response to complaints from students about inconsistent rules about AI use in courses, said James Frazee, vice president for information technology at the campus.

“Students are facing this patchwork of expectations even within the same course taught by different instructors,” Frazee said. In one introductory course, the professor might encourage students to use AI, but another professor teaching the same course might forbid it, he said. “It was a hot mess.”

In that 2023 survey, one student made this request: “Please just tell us what to do and be clear about it.”

Following that survey, the San Diego State Academic Senate approved guidelines for the use of generative AI in instruction and assessments. In 2025, the Senate made it mandatory that faculty include language about AI use in course syllabi.

“It doesn’t say what your disposition has to be, whether it’s pro or con,” Frazee said. “It just says you have to be clear about your expectations. Without the 2023 survey data, that never would have happened.”

According to the 2025 systemwide survey, only 68% of teaching faculty include language about AI use in their syllabi.

Sobo and other faculty who helped develop the 2025 survey hope other CSU campuses will find the data helpful in informing policies about AI use. The dashboard allows users to search for specific campus and discipline data and view student responses by demographic group.

The 2025 survey shows that first-generation students are more interested in formal AI training and that Black, Hispanic and Latino students are more interested than white students. At San Diego State, students are required to earn a micro-credential in AI use during their first year — another change that was made after the 2023 survey.

Students in this year’s survey said they want training that will be relevant to their careers. “I want to learn AI tools that are actually used in my industry, not just generic chatbots,” a mechanical engineering student responded. “Show me what engineers are actually doing with AI on the job.”

The California Faculty Association, which represents about 29,000 educators in the CSU system, said in a February statement that faculty should be included in future systemwide decisions about AI, including whether the contract with OpenAI should be renewed in July.

“CFA members continue to advocate for ethical and enforceable safeguards governing the use of artificial intelligence,” the CFA said in the statement, asking for “protections for using or refusing to use the technology, professional development resources to adapt pedagogy to incorporate the technology, and further protections for faculty intellectual property.”

Many Southern California cities and institutions are dropping big, grabby news today. Before you go "what the what" — remember, it's the first day of April.

Here's a roundup of some of the April Fools' news dump items.

Irvine, the 'pickleball-only' city

Irvine announced that it'll be converting all tennis courts into pickleball courts by 2027. That's one notch for Team Pickleball in the ongoing turf war between tennis lovers and pickleball players over the fight for court space to engage in their beloved sport.

"Starting today, April 1, all tennis courts are being converted to pickleball courts as part of a citywide effort to make Irvine a pickleball-only City by 2027," the post stated. "We don’t just think this is a good idea … we dink it’s a great one."

Catch that? They "dink" it's a great idea.

All hail Queen Latifah in Long Beach

Over in Long Beach, Mayor Rex Richardson announced the city's reigning royalty, the Queen Mary, will be renamed after another queen.

"After careful consideration, I am proud to announce that the Queen Mary will officially be renamed the RMS Queen Latifah," he said. "Long Beach is stepping into a new era as a major music destination — with a new amphitheater, a deep cultural legacy and a future built on sound. It’s only right that our most iconic Queen reflects that energy."

In real-real news, LBC native and everyone's favorite Olympics commenter Snoop Dogg is headlining the grand opening show of the Long Beach Amphitheater in June. That's the new waterfront venue near the RMS Queen Latifah.

Prolific author gets his own library branch

Suspense writer James Patterson has more than 200 novels to his name, selling more than 450 million copies. If anyone deserves his own namesake branch, it would be Patterson, no?

The Los Angeles Public Library certainly dinks so, announcing today the James Patterson Canoga Park branch, "with wall to wall Patterson books and programming centered around this prolific author."

Eau de corpse flower

The opening of the corpse flower has become an annual event at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. The event brings legions hoping to get a whiff of the famed flower's "pungent aroma."

The San Marino institution announced that it's bottling the scent, as part of its new "The Huntington's Stank Collection."

"A musky gym sock note opens this unique fragrance, with a sweet, rotten-egg base to ground it. Smells like you — but smellier," the post explained.

Adopt something you can just leave at home, always

Pasadena Humane got in on the fun with a special event — today only — where you can adopt a rock.

"Adoption ROCKS! And today only, you can adopt a friend you won't take for granite," the message said.