Former CCSN official faces charges

Jennifer Knight

Friday, June 29, 2001 | 12:21 p.m.

A grand jury this morning indicted former Community College of Southern Nevada administrator Orlando Sandoval on a gross misdemeanor charge of misusing his position by hiring his father-in-law.

The indictment charged Sandoval, CCSN's former associate vice president for planning, with violating the state's anti-nepotism laws, a crime that is considered a gross misdemeanor. The penalty carries a maximum of one year in jail and a $2,000 fine, said Brian Kunzi, the senior deputy attorney general prosecuting the case.

"This is an important law because if it weren't in place, it would give too much control to the people in charge," Kunzi said.

The attorney general's office brought the case before a grand jury Thursday. Five witnesses testified in the downtown closed courtroom proceeding at District Court.

Among the witnesses were Duane Stevens, Sandoval's father-in-law and Sal Saporito, the director of operations at CCSN, who supervised Stevens.

Sandoval left his job at CCSN more than a year ago to be the interim vice president of administration at the Nevada State College at Henderson. Just this week, he retired from that position because the college had no more funding to pay him.

"This has been tremendously hard on my family," Sandoval said in an interview on Wednesday. "I've never been investigated in 20 years for anything. I have heard that these aren't pretty things to deal with. It's very discouraging when you spend 16 years with an organization where you develop credibility and this happens."

Sandoval did not appear before the grand jury on Thursday to testify. He is expected to be arraigned next month.

The grand jury hearings were a result of a 10-month investigation by the attorney general's office, which looked into a wide range of allegations.

The attorney general's report, released in March, also resulted in a U.S. Department of Education investigation into the school's use of bonuses in exchange for administrators boosting enrollment. That investigation recently revealed that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the CCSN administration, according to an official who worked on the case.

The report also accused Vince Ricci, a language teacher at CCSN, of allegedly "falsifying student grades and enrollment in order to receive funding for classes he taught."

Ricci's case was expected to be heard before the grand jury Thursday, but the case was not presented, sources said.

Kunzi would not comment Friday on the Ricci case, saying only that the investigation is still pending.