Employee Misconduct

Moving to contain a public relations mess, Wells Fargo & Co. fired a top executive accused of using a bank-owned Malibu beach house to entertain her family and friends. Cheronda Guyton, a senior vice president responsible for commercial foreclosed properties, broke company rules barring personal use of bank property, Wells Fargo said in a statement Monday. The Times reported last week that Guyton had been spotted by neighbors spending time at the Malibu Colony home with her family this summer.

Six employees at Taft High School were reassigned Tuesday while school district and law enforcement officials investigate an alleged hazing incident in the boys locker room on the Woodland Hills campus. Los Angeles Unified School District officials declined to identify the employees who were removed from the school and assigned to district offices, but district sources said Principal Sharon Thomas and volleyball coach Arman Mercado were among them.

A former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive avoided a prison term Friday when a federal judge resentenced him for wire fraud and tax evasion. The judge added only 1,500 hours of community service to Tom Coughlin's punishment, and the former vice chairman said he was grateful. "Judge, I just want to thank you for your fairness," he said. In 2006, U.S. District Judge Robert T. Dawson had sentenced Coughlin to 27 months of home detention, five years' probation, a $50,000 fine and $400,000 restitution.

The head of Adelanto's animal control office has been charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty after investigators said he systematically drowned dozens of kittens over four months last year. Kevin Murphy, 36, was charged Monday with six counts of killing, maiming and abusing animals and faces up to six years in prison if he is convicted.

Three State Department contract employees improperly looked at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's private passport files, the State Department told Obama's Senate office Thursday. A department spokesman said two employees were fired and one disciplined for accessing the files on three separate occasions this year, on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14.

The bad news arrived in November, when workers at Casa Youth Shelter were told a fellow employee had allegedly embezzled more than $200,000 from the Los Alamitos nonprofit. The toll, however, may be much higher than they thought.

When Congress passed a federal medical privacy law more than a decade ago, it was hailed as a new level of protection for patients nationwide. But even though the government has received about 34,000 complaints of privacy violations since it officially began enforcing the law five years ago, only a handful of defendants have been criminally prosecuted.

When penalties were handed out for snooping in UCLA's medical records, it paid to have an M.D. after your name. As a group, doctors at UCLA hospitals who wrongly peeked at the records of pop star Britney Spears got off lighter than other staffers, according to reports released Friday by state health inspectors.

California health regulators have connected 14 more people affiliated with UCLA Medical Center, including four physicians, to the improper viewing of celebrity medical records, bringing the number of current and former workers apparently implicated in the snooping scandal to 68. The additional violations came to light in a report by the California Department of Public Health, which was sent to the hospital Friday.

Police have arrested a Texas man suspected in identity thefts involving more than 160 UC Irvine graduate and medical students, authorities said. Michael Tyrone Thomas, 27, of Fort Worth, was an employee in the Student Resources Department of United Healthcare in Dallas, authorities said. The company manages the university's graduate student health insurance program. The 163 identity theft reports involved students in the 2006-07 school year, said UCI Police Chief Paul Henisey.