Child support official busted for corruption

The San Jose California newspaper reports:

SAN JOSE -- Santa Clara County supervisors Tuesday announced they have fired the director of child support services after looking into his alleged abuse of travel privileges for personal gain.

The dismissal of John Vartanian came less than a month after county officials suspended him with pay following a TV news report in which he was criticized for his use of a personal credit card for official travel that allowed him to benefit from accumulated airline and hotel credits. ...

The county launched its probe following a scathing report on Vartanian's travel payments by NBC television's local investigative unit in early September. The station reported that he had charged more than $55,000 in county travel and hotel costs for himself and other county employees to his own credit card and then collected the travel and hotel points earned for his private use. County policy states that "frequent flier credits earned by county employees for travel on county business should be applied toward future county travel."

and adds:

As I searched for more info about this person, I found this website showing he got paid $300k last year. This is the local NBC station's investigative report into the director's travel funds. Meanwhile, the county child support services dept gets lots of negative yelp reviews. Gotta say...a corrupt and lousy director.

Wow, a salary of $300k is at least twice what I would have expected. And yes, the reviews are pretty bad. (I did not even know that Yelp reviews govt agencies.)