Renee Moncito was a convicted thief and forger. She ran a foster care agency that was one of the most cited by state inspectors for lapses in care, including cases in which children were beaten, locked in their rooms for days or subjected to other mistreatment.
Yet year after year, the agency was re-approved by state and county officials, growing into one of the largest private foster family agencies in Los Angeles County, responsible for thousands of children over the years.
Wings of Refuge is now being terminated not because of abuse but after officials determined it had mismanaged millions in taxpayer dollars — a situation that has raised concerns about the county's ability to adequately monitor such groups.
The $3-million-a-year contract with Wings of Refuge was canceled after the group failed to file its financial forms for charitable organizations for three years and lost its tax-exempt status, a requirement for foster care agencies in California.
For years, state regulators had flagged Wings of Refuge as being at financial risk. The agency had accumulated $458,000 in delinquent payroll taxes and was more than $2 million in debt, according to licensing records.
County officials acknowledge they were slow to act.
"I think it's alarming that these kinds of situations exist and that we haven't done anything about it sooner," said Philip Browning, who was named director of Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services in 2012 to help spur reforms.
Moncito, Wings of Refuge's chief executive, defended her record and blamed her agency's financial troubles on not receiving enough government money to care for children. "I have given way more than I have received," she said in a recent interview.
The county has begun to shift the nearly 200 foster children from Wings of Refuge to other agencies.
Wings' termination, effective Oct. 31, followed questions from The Times about Moncito's criminal history and the agency's record of physical and financial abuses.
In 1981, Moncito was convicted of grand theft and forgery related to passing bad checks.
Years of financial struggle followed her release, and personal bankruptcy records show that in 1998 she had $55 in savings and was $85,000 debt. Moncito founded Wings of Refuge that year and was awarded tax-exempt status.
The state Department of Social Services licensed the agency to recruit and supervise foster parents, and it gave Moncito a waiver allowing her to work in foster care despite her felony convictions. "My crime wasn't something that would impact children in an adverse manner," Moncito said.
State social services director Will Lightbourne declined to be interviewed about Wings of Refuge. His spokesman said the records related to the criminal waiver were more than a decade old, and he was unable to explain the rationale behind the decision.
Los Angeles County officials said they were unaware of Moncito's criminal past until learning of it from The Times. Browning, however, said: "If that person would have applied for a county job, they never would have a job. And those rules should apply to these employees as well."
Wings of Refuge grew quickly, eventually caring for more than 1,100 children over a recent three-year period.
Moncito also launched other enterprises: a Wings of Refuge branch in Texas, a drug treatment program in Los Angeles and a used-clothing business that sold items to foster children.
State and county officials had problems with monitoring Wings' finances. Officials gave Moncito many extensions to file information. She missed deadlines, and the information she submitted often was incomplete or misleading, according to state regulators.
In August, Wings was cited by the state for making "false claims" to hide some of the agency's financial problems.
Tracie Hicks, who was a Wings of Refuge foster parent for nearly a decade, said Moncito exploited the system to make money off of foster children.
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