Agent suspended in title probe

A licensing agent linked by police to a sophisticated auto-theft ring has been suspended from her job and her access to state computers has been revoked.

Spokane County Auditor’s Office officials on Tuesday ordered Patricia Leistiko to stop processing car titles after questions were raised by a reporter about her possible involvement in the investigation targeting her former daughter-in-law, 34-year-old Brenda Sue Lynch.

Washington State Patrol detectives believe Lynch has been coached by Leistiko about the fraudulent process of “washing titles,” which allows a thief to appear on paper as the legal owner of a car even before the car is stolen.

Neither Lynch nor Leistiko has been officially charged, but the investigation – which has identified 60 criminal associates – is continuing and is expected to result in dozens of felony charges, WSP Sgt. Dave Bolton said this week.

Ellen Marsh, manager of Spokane County Auto License and Passport Services, said county officials knew that Leistiko had been named in the investigation. But Marsh said she was asked by WSP detectives to hold off any action until their paperwork was filed in Superior Court.

Leistiko is a longtime employee of Southside Auto Licensing, 2933 E. 29th, which Marsh described as “a good sub-agency.”

“They are very upset about this … that she used her position to do something she shouldn’t have been doing,” Marsh said.

Inga Gerimonte, manager of Southside Auto Licensing, said Leistiko has been suspended.

“We were told we had to do that,” Gerimonte said. “We knew nothing about this.”

The Washington Department of Licensing contracts with each of the state’s 39 counties to process title transfers, license plate tabs and registrations. The county can then contract with private companies, called sub-agents, to process those documents for the DOL. The private companies make money on the transactions by charging a $10 fee for each title and $4 for each renewal.

Marsh said an audit of Leistiko’s work prior to the investigation found that she had processed documents for a family member, which is prohibited.

“She had been warned. She was just told not to do it again,” Marsh said.

But the investigation alleges that Lynch used Leistiko to help process the titles on cars that she stole. In one case, Leistiko was reprimanded by Grant Prouty of the Auditor’s Office for not noticing that a name was traced over on a title that she processed for Lynch. Prouty also again reminded Leistiko on July 6 that it was against policy to process requests for family members.

Leistiko said in an interview Tuesday that she is raising Lynch’s child. She denied any involvement in the case.

Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton said eight private agencies handle about half of all the local transactions for the DOL. The rest are processed at the vehicle licensing office at the Spokane County Courthouse.

“At times it can be quite interesting when you are working in a private-public contract where a private company provides public services,” she said. “It can sometimes be a struggle to try and monitor activities of a sub-agent.”

Each private office is audited, but that review only takes a look at transactions for a two- or three-week period.

“There is a hard and fast rule in the DOL that you do not process family members,” Dalton said. “For exactly what happened, because there are other things people might do.”

For example, three Spokane County employees were fired in 1997 when the auditor’s office discovered they were changing the addresses of family members to avoid emissions testing on their vehicles. Marsh said the case involved 12 family members and 76 transactions.

“There is just this constant temptation,” Dalton said. “And the sub-agents and myself have to make sure that we hire people with excellent ethics and to make sure they are properly supervised. For every rule that government puts in place for its citizens, there are always people trying to circumvent those rules. That is one of the challenges with motor vehicle licenses.”

And it’s getting worse, Marsh said.

Because of budget cuts, the DOL has reduced the number of copies of titles for each transaction. Under the old system, the purchaser, the county and the state would keep a copy of the title for every transaction. But the state recently switched to a two-copy system, leaving the county with no copy.

“That eliminates some oversight for us,” Marsh said. “We can’t look at how (sub-agents) made the transaction. The whole thing scares me.”

Dalton said eliminating a copy of the title for the county will make it more difficult to detect fraudulent activity, such as title washing.

“Before we could look at those transactions in detail,” she said. “It’s going to make it more difficult to monitor the actions of the sub-agents.”