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A high-profile nonprofit returned $275,000 in taxpayer mental health funds to Orange County after a demand from county health officials spurred by LAist reporting. That demand came after county officials said they found “no evidence Mind OC performed any of the services under the Contract ,” when they reviewed records requested by LAist through public records law. The demand noted that Mind OC “apparently subcontracted its work under the Contract to Josephina (Josie) Batres or her company, Talentgate, Inc.
” and goes on to say Mind OC “cannot substantiate” that work was done. Batres is the wife of a top aide to disgraced former county Supervisor Andrew Do. As LAist reported last month , Batres is the longtime partner — and now wife — of then-Supervisor Do’s chief of staff, Chris Wangsaporn.
According to multiple people briefed on the contract, Batres was hired by Mind OC for the work at Do’s direction. The contract called for two dozen community listening sessions and subsequent reports to help the county increase access to publicly-funded mental health services. Under the contract terms, the work was supposed to start in late 2020 and be completed by Nov.
30, 2022, in exchange for the $275,000. The records show that Mind OC paid Batres the vast majority of those funds — $255,000, or about 93% of the total. County officials now say the invoices and work product Batres did on behalf of Mind OC fall far short.
“None of the records Mind OC produced to the County — not a single one — show Mind OC performed any work under the Contract,” Leon Page, Orange County’s chief counsel, wrote in the demand letter dated Nov. 1 . Still, payments from the county to Mind OC and from Mind OC to Batres continued despite a lack of any record of Batres organizing the 24 listening sessions required by the end of 2021, or writing the reports stipulated under the contract, according to county officials and an LAist review of Mind OC documents.
Batres and Wangsaporn didn’t return LAist’s voicemail messages or emails requesting comment Thursday and Friday. LAist filed a public records request with Mind OC and the county to obtain those records after discovering a contract provision that required Mind OC to turn over records to the county if asked to do so by a member of the public. Mind OC then provided the records to the county, which LAist then obtained through a records request to the county.
After receiving Mind OC records, county officials demanded a full refund. “The invoices not only fail to show any work was performed under the Contract," wrote the county’s top attorney, Leon Page, in his Nov. 1 demand letter to the nonprofit, which cites LAist’s records request.
"Mind OC’s vendor did not even bother at times to change the invoice number or month of services performed in seeking payment from Mind OC.” Three days later, Mind OC agreed to give back all of the money. In a letter to the county , its lawyer said LAist’s records request and the county’s demand Mind OC produce them had “triggered an internal investigation at Mind OC into this matter.
” In a phone interview with LAist, Desiree Thomas, Mind OC’s chief operating officer, said the organization used reserve funds to pay back the county. She said they hadn’t yet decided whether to pursue a claim against Batres or any others. “We are reserving the right to pursue financial damages to our reputation by those who caused it,” she said.
Ellen Guevara, a spokesperson for the O.C. Health Care Agency, confirmed the refund was received Nov.
6 — a few weeks after LAist published a story about the contract and apparent lack of work performed. Wangsaporn, who has been married to Batres since December 2021, resigned from his position the day after LAist’s story was published last month. His resignation also came shortly before federal prosecutors announced Do had agreed to plead guilty to a felony bribery charge in connection to millions in taxpayer dollars Do directed to a nonprofit led on-and-off by his daughter, Rhiannon Do.
At the news conference held to announce the plea agreement, O.C. District Attorney Todd Spitzer told LAist: “I can only say that there's an ongoing investigation with respect to Mr.
Wangsaporn and his wife.” The contract was issued by the O.C.
Health Care Agency to Mind OC in late 2020, during the pandemic, with no competitive bidding. The work was supposed to focus especially on non-English speakers, foster youth, and other underrepresented communities. According to multiple people briefed on the contract, Mind OC was awarded the contract and in turn hired Josie for the work at the direction of Do.
Last month, Guevara, the county health agency spokesperson, told LAist the county never received the work required by the contract, which was supposed to include quarterly updates, an annual report and a final report. Records obtained from the county by LAist show that Batres’ home-based HR consulting firm, TalentGate, billed Mind OC $5,000 in consulting fees under the contract in January 2021, and $10,000 each month after that through Feb. 2023 — for a total of $255,000.
TalentGate also billed MindOC for $1,851 in mileage reimbursement. The remainder of the $275,000 was retained by Mind OC. The records show the last payment from Mind OC to TalentGate under the contract cleared on March 3, 2023.
The records obtained by LAist include a single report from a series of three listening sessions — all carried out in February and March 2023, more than a year after the deadline for completing work outlined in the contract. The report, which was attached to the county’s refund demand letter , is less than four pages long and includes a list of participants and bullet points indicating “major themes” and “key findings.” Mind OC records also include a “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion [DE&I] Strategic Plan” authored by Batres and prepared for Mind OC’s chief executive at the time, Marshall Moncrief.
It’s unclear how this internal-facing report about Mind OC, dated after the contract time period, is tied to the contract’s goal of increasing equity across all of the county’s mental health services. The 16-page plan, which is also attached to the county’s refund demand letter , focuses on Mind OC’s own diversity and equity as an organization. Page, the county counsel, referenced the report in his Nov.
1 demand letter to Mind OC: “The report from Ms. Batres to Mind OC included with the documents produced appears to be a draft report of boilerplate statements that do not reference any prior meetings or listening sessions.” In his Nov.
1 letter, county counsel demands a full $275,000 refund to the county from Mind OC, within a week. Page, the county lawyer, also demanded that Mind OC preserve all records related to the contract. He addressed the letter to Mind OC’s current CEO, Phillip Franks, and the organization’s prior CEO at the time of the contract, Moncrief.
He left Mind OC last year. Bruce Dizenfeld, a lawyer for Mind OC, responded to the county’s refund demand letter on Nov. 4, agreeing that the organization would refund the $275,000.
In his reply, Dizenfeld said Mind OC intended “to identify the parties responsible for the financial damage and damage to Mind OC’s reputation caused by intentional, reckless or negligent conduct by the parties involved who owed a duty to the County, Mind OC, and the people of the County of Orange.” The lawyer also demanded that the county preserve all of its records related to the contract, noting that the county paid out $275,000 in taxpayer funds under the contract despite not receiving any of the required work. “Mind OC needs to understand why it took almost two years to discover the shortcomings of the Talentgate Project requested by the County,” the letter states.
“Mind OC needs to be assured that in the future there will be timely communications regarding project needs and project deficiencies from both the County and Mind OC so that corrective action can be taken timely.” The Orange County contract is one of several LAist has uncovered over the past year in which federal taxpayer funds went to people close to former Supervisor Do despite county records indicating much of the money did not go to the required work. These contracts were initiated during the pandemic without competitive bidding or disclosure on public agendas.
In several cases, contractors didn't provide proof of how the money was spent, as required under those contracts, according to county lawsuits and documents reviewed by LAist. Do pleaded guilty in October to conspiring to receive kickbacks from $9.3 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds he directed to his daughter’s nonprofit, Viet America Society (VAS).
Federal prosecutors, while announcing their findings against Do, said only 15% of funds meant to feed people in need were used as intended. Federal tax filings for VAS show it paid $40,000 to a company named "TalenGate" in 2020, based at the same home address as Batres’ company TalentGate, which was formed several weeks after VAS was registered with the state. The company was VAS’ highest paid independent contractor that year, according to the tax filings.
That year, VAS was funded by county dollars meant to feed needy seniors, which flowed to VAS through another nonprofit, Hand to Hand Relief Organization, according to public records obtained by LAist. The county is suing Hand to Hand for alleged fraud in diverting those taxpayer funds in 2020, which then-Supervisor Do also had awarded. VAS’ public tax filings show it also paid "TalenGate" another $10,000 in 2021, while VAS’ financial ledger it filed with the county shows it paid the same amount to Batres herself in January 2021.
The tax filings list the payments as being for “PUBLIC RELATION.” Reached by phone in April and this month, Batres declined to answer LAist’s questions about what the payments were for. Batres’ husband later signed forms authorizing $30,000 in county event dollars to VAS in his capacity as Do’s chief of staff, according to county records obtained by LAist .
Mind OC has been the county’s highest-profile mental health contractor in recent years, with the county awarding tens of millions of dollars of mental health contracts to the group. But its relationship with the county has faced challenges in recent months. In August, the county abruptly canceled a major contract with the group to manage service providers at the county's signature mental health campus, Be Well, in the city of Orange.
That contract was ended a little over two years into a three-year, $63.8-million deal with the county. In a recent interview with LAist, Franks, the CEO of Mind OC, said he was “shocked” when the county canceled that contract.
The rupture came after an audit found Mind OC failed to provide proper oversight of mental health and substance use treatment services on the campus. But Franks said the group had already submitted a corrective action plan to the county. He said he had met with leaders of the O.
C. Health Care Agency the day before the contract was terminated and that they seemed “supportive of the changes we were making.” Franks also questioned why the county had paid Mind OC the full $275,000 under the mental health equity contract if the county believed the required services weren’t being provided.
Those payments were all issued while Clayton Chau was the county health agency’s director. Right before working for the county, Chau was a top-level executive at Mind OC. Chau told LAist he had no comment for this story.
In May, the county signed a new $95 million, three-year contract with Mind OC to run a new Be Well mental health campus set to open next year in Irvine. In November 2023, LAist began investigating how millions in public taxpayer dollars were spent. In total, LAist has uncovered public records showing more than $13 million in public money that was approved to a little-known nonprofit that records state was led on and off by Rhiannon Do.
Most of that money was directed to the group by Supervisor Do outside of the public’s view and never appeared on public meeting agendas. He did not publicly disclose his family ties. Much of the known funding came from federal coronavirus relief money.
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