INSIDE INGLEWOOD-At the Carson city council meeting of March 18, South Bay Workforce Investment Board member Koroush Hangafarin presented a lengthy report on his agency’s work. The report, while filled with terms such as “high performance” and what Hangafarin implied were multi-million-dollar state grants, failed to have a key statistic regarding the Workforce Board’s primary job.
After listening to Hangafarin’s rambling report filled with confusing language, odd pauses, mispronounced terms and w hat appeared to be incomplete phrases, Carson Mayor Jim Dear brought up a simple question: “How many people are getting jobs through the [South Bay Workforce]?” Hangafarin refused to answer, and continued with his remarkable reading of the nine-minute report. (He was supposed to summarize the report and be at the podium no more than three minutes.)
When Hangafarin was finished, Mayor Dear reiterated his question. “How many jobs were created?” he asked firmly. Hangafarin hesitated before answering, “I don’t know.”
Hangafarin then began praising the Workforce while refusing to answer the question as it was posed twice more from the mayor and then a city council member.The video may be seen here. Hangafarin's "report" is found at 2:04:00 (hour:minutes:seconds) in the video.
Attempts to reach Hangafarin afterward were equally confusing, if not more so.
At the Carson South Bay Workforce Center, a woman named “Sandy” answered the telephone. She claimed to not know of any “Koroush Hangafarin” but eventually gave a number for what she said was Carson City Hall. (It was later learned that the number went to California State University–Dominguez Hills, where Hangafarin has in past interviews claimed to have worked.) Asked if he worked there, she claimed to not know, and when pressed, finally gave a number to what she claimed was the South Bay Workforce Investment Board.
At the Investment Board number, a woman named Ebony answered. She too claimed to not know of any Koroush Hangafarin.
Some research regarding Hangafarin turned up a history of possible fraud in the city of San Diego.
A story in the March 10, 2005 San Diego Tribune reported that Hangafarin stepped down as Port Commissisoner of San Diego after only one month. According to the story and a related one on March 7 that year, “Hangafarin, 45, was sworn in Feb. 1 and became embroiled in controversy Feb. 25 when he went to Cuba and struck an unauthorized trade agreement with a Cuban import-export company on behalf of the port.”It was alleged that he struck the deal was done at the same time that a related deal was signed by him for a company that sponsored a trip to Cuba and was arranged by an executive of one of the involved companies. It was also discovered that the executive was a neighbor of Hangafarin.
The Tribune also wrote that Hanagfarin’s resume contained many distinct inaccuracies regarding his past employment. Some of the executive positions that Hangafarin claimed to have had were discovered to be far lower on the totem than he claimed in a resume he submitted to the City of San Diego when applying for the commission position.
In particular, he claimed to be managing director for the Corbis Group. In reality, he was only the managing director of the San Diego office which had only one other employee.
At the time, he sat on the board of directors of the Lincoln Club of San Diego County, a Republican business group. Three years later in 2008, he gave generous campaign contributions to Republican Robert J. Watkins. The information for his campaign contribution, according to the primary Post’s reflection of filings to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), stated that Hangafarin’s occupation was “Managing Director” at Corbis Group.
Attempts to reach Koroush Hangafarin, as noted above, were in vain.
(Randall Fleming is a veteran journalist and magazine publisher. He has worked at and for the New York Post, the Brooklyn Spectator and the Los Feliz Ledger. He is currently editor-in-chief at the Morningside Park Chronicle, a monthly newspaper based in Inglewood, CA and on-line at www.MorningsideParkChronicle.com) Photo credit: Teka-Lark Fleming.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 26
Pub: Mar 28, 2014
