It's been a while since since you've seen a good.
Old fashion doing drugs video, so we saw brand.
That video was recorded at Sarah Warren's apartment. It shows Sarah, a twenty one year old, doing meth and other drugs with a much older man. Considering what he's into. You might be surprised to learn what this man does for a living. He's the dean of the medical school at USC. You Christian. For months, I've been fighting to get into the paper my story about the dean of the USC Medical School, Carmen Puliafido. Then I get my hands on some of the videos he and Sarah Warren had been making.
They come from a source I didn't expect. My name is Paul Pringle. I'm an investigative reporter for the La Times, and this is Fallen Angels, Episode five, The Warren Family. I first went to see the Warrens in March of twenty seventeen. Matt Hamilton, another Times reporter, came with me to their house in Orange County. Matt's part of the secret reporting team I'd put together with my editor. But when we get to their place in Huntington Beach, the
only person home is Sarah's teenage brother, Charles. We ask about Puviafido and his sister, and the kid pulls up his shirt sleeve to show us a tattoo. It says, no snitches.
And this is like the punk younger brother who's trying to.
Act tough reporter Matt Hamilton.
That's another to work closed on us. I think that is when Paul made the decision. He drove down to Paul Warren's office in Long Beach and maybe introduction, which was risky because if you're door knocking someone to go to their workplace is like extremely low chances of success.
I don't like the idea of showing up at Paul Warren's work, but Sarah's in rehab and Charles isn't talking, so at this point Paul's all we got. He works at a logistics company in downtown Long Beach. There's a garden the lobby. I don't tell him who I am. I just asked him if he can direct me to Paul's office. He won't, but he phones Paul to say I'm there. A couple minutes later, Sarah Warren's father appears.
He's in his fifties, medium Bill brown hair. I tell him I'm a reporter for the La Times, and immediately his face falls like he knew this day would come. He leads me to a private area where we can talk. I asked him if i'll answer a few questions confidentially. With some reluctance, he agrees. Paul tells me that he and his wife have been trying to get Pulliafido out of Sarah's life for two years. He says, Carmen thinks Sarah's his girlfriend, and the Warrens are desperate for her
rehab to work. That's all he'll say for now. I give him my card and ask if we can speak again. He says he'll think about it. Even if we can't get Sarah or her parents. The reporting team has enough for a story, so it's time to poke USC president Max Dechias again, give him one last chance to comment. We decided to send Matt Hamilton and Sarah Parvini to follow up in person.
Paula basically tasks us with one of the most difficult parts, which is confronting an administrator at USC who doesn't want to be confronted.
Matt and I are both USC alums, both products of the journalism School of USC, and it seemed fitting for the two of us to be the people to go back on campus and to sit in that office and hope for an interview with Nikias.
We kno f in the president's dore and go in, and we had not realized that the USC President's office was really a series of offices. There was clearly an inner sanctum, and then an outer sank them, and then even further outer sank them.
There was a person at the front desk.
We told them who we were, or two reporters from the La Times.
We're working on a story.
We'd like to speak with President Kias.
And we sat there and waited, but of course we were turned away.
We were both a little crestfallen that we didn't get to lay eyes on the president. Really that what was like the height of Max and Kius's power because us he was just raking in over a billion a year. The money was arriving so fast, and he didn't have time for two dollar Times reporters.
I also emailed the Kias's office for a response, and I attached the nine to one one recording from the hotel continence. Remembering what his office said in that letter, to Davon, I ad a ps quote. I have never followed you on Instagram and I have no interest in your travel schedule. I know going to the Kias could easily meet another complaint from his office, and the top editors at the Times, Davon and Mark are not going
to like it. And on Monday, the reporting team here is from one of our editors, shall be grad we.
Got an email saying to the effect of, Okay, the team's done, good work, carry on with your other assignments and stories. I do remember a sense of Shelby being leaned on to have the team do other things.
Matt Late, our editor on the story, tells me Davon has apparently found out about the reporting team and now he's pressuring Shelby to take everyone off the project. It seems maybe Nikias did complain again.
I remember calling Paul and other team members after receiving that email, and it was like, disregard the email. Just keep doing what you're doing. I know it saysn't in writing, but the real mandate is to keep going. The five of us were able to do significant headway and gell as a team, and it made it almost impossible for it to be disbanded by that point, and it was kind of a brilliant tactical move by mid level editors to put like five people of varied abilities, skill, experience,
age onto a team. It's like a broad constituency kind of gave it and impossible to kill arrangement.
There was a lot of contempt for the leadership of the paper.
We found them ridiculous.
Harriet Ryan had been through this kind of thing with her investigation into Purdue Pharma, and she isn't about to let this story suffer the same fate.
It was about journalism. There was something about the purity of the journalism afflict, the comfortable and comfort they afflicted. It was why we were all in this field. It was why we got up every morning and like went to this building and made less money than we could of and dealt with the fact that we could be laid off at any minute. We all did it for this belief in this thing.
Shelby sends another email to the team saying again that we need to stand down. We ignore it, so we're not a secret reporting team anymore, just an insubordinate one. I give Paul Warren a few days to get in touch, but he doesn't. Then one morning I get a call from his wife, mary Anne Warren, Sarah's mother. She won't go on the record, at least not yet, but she agrees to talk. I don't tell mary Anne that have already spoken to her husband and said she doesn't bring
it up. I assume he hasn't told her either. I have to maintain Paul's confidentiality, even from his wife. We arranged to meet at the Hilton in Huntington Beach. I first see mary Anne in the hotel lounge. She's tanlonde and looks a lot like her daughter. She says her husband doesn't know that she's meeting with me, and neither does Sarah. We find a quiet table at the back and she starts to tell me what Carmen Pullioffido has done to her family. The Warrens first learned about Pulliafido
when Sarah ran away from home. She had always been in and had run away before, but this time was different. They didn't hear from her for months, so mary Anne was relieved when she got a Facebook message from one of Sarah's friends.
He called and said, your daughter is mixed up with these mad men.
Now, the Lawrens would end up signing a non disclosure agreement with USC and we'll get to that. They can't tell their whole story, But Mari Anne did go on the record. These excerpts are from a transcript read by an actor through Facebook.
When Sarah went missing and Carmen had the first apartment for her, I said, bring her to me. I didn't care who he was.
To me.
He was like a guardian angel because I hadn't seen my daughter in a couple of months.
Sarah came home, but she wasn't the same. She had struggled with her drinking and dabbled with drugs before, but now she was addicted to meth and she claimed that this sixty four year old doctor was her boyfriend. It was the start of a terrible cycle.
She oh deed with this guy like four or five times. Pasadena Sheriffs had to have a suicide squad at her apartment. Of course, no trace of any police reports.
No police reports. Just like after the hotel constance, the Warrens got Sarah into rehab again and leaned on pull your feeto to help pay for it. But even though he's willing to spend money on your treatment, he's still part of the problem.
Sarah says that he snuck drugs in all the candy that he would send her in rehab, and that's why she never got better.
She was in three rehab facilities. She was kicked out of one of them because Puliafido smuggled Santax bars to her.
Reporter Matt Hamilton.
The first day of her rehabit, she went out to the car and he would give her sann Axe handle the bag.
And on the second.
Day Fiet brought her meth by putting it in a sunglass case on the road outside the facility, and so she was kicked out after they found out she was high. At the second rehab Facilita was discharged but relapsed on the ride home with Pulliafido because he gave her meth and alcohol on the ride home. Monarch sure Is I believe was the third. He would mail her zanaxs Skittles bags and he called it Skittles surgery.
Now knowing what Pulliafido was capable of, the warrems have put Sarah into a rehab where he can't get to her.
Where she is now, they don't let any men in, you know, So it drove him wild. I had to kind of keep him at bay so he wouldn't go there searching for her, saying, oh no, this rehabs like a convent. They don't let anyone in.
Carmen.
I hardly get to speak to her myself.
They consulted a private investigator who told him not to shut out Puliofido since they don't know what he maan I do.
I have kept in contact with Carmen while Sarah's been in rehab. When we first found out all this was going on, who he was, I was advised that we keep our enemy close to us, my husband and I. So we've been in constant contact with Carmen, like every two or three weeks.
And Marianne tells me something else. Sarah is not the only one in her family who's fallen under his spell. Pouliofido also has his hooks into her teenage son, Charles.
Puliofido had given him meth twenty five to fifty bars of sanax.
By the way, bars is just another term for pills.
Polifido and his sister they were both smoking meth. This was in her Pasadena apartment. They offered it to him and he accepted and he was only seventeen years old at the time. He's someone who was going over to his sister's apartment and invited to partake, but.
Charles has been trying to get free of Pulliffido. He hates how the dean controls Sarah with drugs, keeps her away from her friends and family. Mary Anne also tells me that Sarah had once called Charles afraid for her life. Pulliafido had seen her with another man and it burst into her apartment in a jealous rage. When Charles rushed over, he found his sister screaming because Pulliofido had been using a steam iron on her clothes while she was wearing them.
He fought with Pullioffido to defend his sister. He beat Pulloffido, hurt his knee.
Charles warned Pulliafido to stay away from Sarah, and he threatened to kill him, but Pulliafido wouldn't leave her alone. At the end of our meeting, mary Anne confirms what we've heard from the drug dealer Kyle Void. Mary Anne had looked through Sarah's laptop and found hundreds of photos and videos of Pulliafido and Sarah doing drugs. And having sex. I know that if we can get our hands on this evidence, David and Mark will have to publish the story.
So I asked Marianna if she'll share the files with me. She tells me she'll think about it. Back in the newsroom, I update the team. Every one of them is struck by some different terrible detail. Adam Ilmark.
He was providing drugs to people Sarah's brother included, who was a minor. And you know, this is a really damning critical detail, Sarah Parvini.
Here's a young woman who you know is struggling not only with substance issues, but also this imbalance of power. She wasn't too far an age for me. It's hard to turn away from something like that.
Matt Hamilton, what she was describing was multipole, deliberate efforts to even when she is at a facility to try to break her addiction, he is enabling it. That to me was outrageous. This is just someone who's simultaneously entrusted with shepherding the education of people of the same age, and it just he's a doctor.
Mary Anne Warren is worried that if she hands over the photos and videos of Pullia Fido and her daughter Sarah will feel betrayed, and Pulliafido might come after the family. So I suggest a compromise. The Times can describe the images in the article, but not publish them. She's reassured to some extent. She says she'll look for a good example to send me. I wait, I follow up, I wait some more, and finally I get a text from
her with a screenshot from one of the videos. It's an image I'm not likely to forget.
It was like a photo of Puliafido with a pipe. You just see him hovering over this pipe and there was like white smoke. I remember thinking, okay, that's not about a school dean. It just was so different from this man that you saw on the US website or images of some charity function.
It was just like, okay, wow. Mary Anne sends six more photos, all showing Puliafidos smoking meth. We have more than enough. It's time to write the story and get it out there. Harriet Ryan tackles the first draft.
Carmen Pullifedo, the dean of US's Tech Medical School, arrived at the Galla fundraiser at the Beverly Wilshore Hotel a year and a half ago, with the confidence of a man totally in his elements, he moved through the crowd of celebrities like Pierce Brosen and Don Henley and wealthy school donors like Dana and David Dornsite, shaking hands and posing for photos, and delivering the message that had become a refrain in his eight years in office, USC was
climbing into the ranks of the country's most elite research institutions. In the less refined setting of the Van Nuys Courthouse. A few days earlier, a convicted methamphetamine a heroin dealer named Kyle Voy was told to write his contact information on court form. The address he scrawled was a sprawling, five million dollar mansion in one of Pasadena's Tonius neighborhoods, Pullifido's residence.
The next day, Mary Anne calls to tell me that she's just heard from Pulliofido. He's invited her to lunch. Mary Anne Warren tells me that Pulli Affido says he wants to talk to her about Sarah and the La Times, and though it doesn't make a lot of sense, he's worried. Pulliafido somehow knows he's been talking to me, but this lunch with Pulliofido is a chance to get him to talk about his relationship with Sarah and what he knows
about our investigation. In a perfect world, should record the whole thing, but in the state of California, you need permission to record a private conversation, so that's out. But a reporter might be able to overhear them, heavesdrop and take notes. We wouldn't be able to quote the conversation because mary Anne wants to remain anonymous, but it would be a major help for our reporting and give us the backup we need. So we decide someone needs to
go undercover. But who would it be? Clearly not me, we decide on Sarah Parvini and Adam il Marik.
Paul had tried to reach Balafido numerous times by then, and so that would have just been too obvious, and so we figured he's not going to recognize us, and we could pull this off.
Kind of felt like this good old fashioned kind of journalism of you know, following the quote unquote bad guy and getting the information that you need.
We look for a restaurant that's big enough for multiple tables to be available and a time eleven thirty am when a nearby table might be empty. We land on a place called the Blue Gold, a cavernous steak and seafood restaurant in Huntington Beach.
I remember, you know, driving down to this mall where the restaurant was and meeting up with Adam, meeting up with Paul, having a huddle before walking in.
Mary Am will go in first after pull thea Fido arrives, Sarah and Adam will try to sit at the next table. They'll look like any California couple. But if pull the Afido senses something's off and confronts them, they'll have to admit their journalists for the la times. Those are the rules. I'll be waiting in the car as they text me updates. Fifteen minutes go by, then finally he shows up.
We actually waited outside for him to walk in, and then we kind of followed in a couple minutes later and sat at the table next to the It was, you know, a nice kind of a bit of scale kind of a restaurant, had kind of a Mediterranean menu.
Adam and I ordered chuck schuka, which was funny for us because we're about Middle Eastern and we just sat there and we listened.
He seemed kind of disheveled. This is a superstar medical school dean, you know, and he did not come across that way. He started to hear. You know, mary Anne just kind of really peppering him with questions and really trying to nail him down on certain things, like the fact that he was providing Sarah with drugs. I think he paused for a second and he said, I gave her the money for it, but he wouldn't actually admit
to furnishing the drugs themselves. You know. He gave his story of how he believed he was the hero in all of this. He was trying to rescue Sarah.
We were texting the team and like a group text updates about what we were hearing, and then also simultaneously taking notes he.
Was giving her money for drugs. At the very least, they had a long term kind of arrangement.
Picking up on tone, picking up on sort of intention, you get the vibe of this person, of this relationship, of the sort of trying to cover his tracks, try to sort of smooth things over. Even that in and of itself, if we couldn't quote from any of the conversation.
It told us so much.
Mary Anne presses Pull Your Fido about the incident at the hotel constance. She says, when you see someone passed out, you call nine to one one. Pull Your Fido responds, I'm glad I did what I did. I didn't try to make a big deal out of it. When Marianne confronts him about delivering drugs to Sarah in rehab, he doesn't deny it. He even admits that at least two other people have been kicked out of rehab because of his drug deliveries.
There was this almost boastful quality to when Puliafido was speaking with Mary Anne about the things that he had done, when she would kind of try to pull it out of him, like, oh, and do you remember when this happened, and he would just sort of step right into it and almost be proud.
Pullia Fido tells Mary Anne that the La Times is after him. Never talk to them, he warns her, and then he asks, are you sure you aren't talking to them? Cool as can be, Mary Anne says, why would I throw my daughter under the bus. The day after her lunch with Puliafido, mary Anne calls me. She's decided to show me the rest of the photos and videos on Sarah's laptop and phone, and she's finally told her husband Paul that she's been talking to me, only to find
out that he's doctor b two. Late the next day, Sarah, Parvini and I had down to Huntingdon Beach to meet the Warrens, both of them together.
It was late when we drove down together, Paul and I in the same car.
Marianne has booked a conference room at the Hiatt for us to meet in along with the family therapist. We just want to do what's right, she says. The meeting is off the record. On the conference table, there's a laptop and a hard drive.
It was like this long table where we basically got these little drives with the information on them.
The Warrens agree that we can take the laptop, but we can't publish what's on it. Back in the newsroom, Sarah, Adam and Matt begins scrolling through dozens of videos and photos. There's a video date stamped the night before Sarah's overdose of her and Puliafido in the room at the hotel Constance.
I remember just having to literally Google, like, what is a hot reil? What does this mean? It's a method of taking a methemphetamine where you heat it up and then you inhale it through your nose. It's like one of the most dangerous ways that you can do meth.
In another video, Pulia, Fido and Sarah shotgun some myth. She calls him Tony. In another Fido tells Sarah he's working on getting more ecstasy, and Sarah tells him she had been arrested just the night before. I'm working on the X. Yeah, I know, think in jail.
Oh, by the way, I went to jail last night.
Tell you about that story. And then there's the ecstasy video.
He is like in a tux dressed very nicely, and it's in this vertically kind of shot like selfie style video, and you know, he sticks his tongue out and there's there's a tab on there and he says, you know, the ball, I'm going to do some ecstasy before the ball. In the other footage that we had, we could tell that he was doing various drugs, but he's not sitting there talking about doing the drugs. There is something particularly striking about someone of their own admissions, saying this is
what I'm doing. It essentially wraps it up in a bow for you.
Needless to say, we're stunned by what we see. And then two days later I get another phone call Sarah Warren is ready to talk. Davon Maharaj and Mark Duvison deny that they did anything wrong in their handling of the USC investigation, and they maintained that any negative betrayal of their actions is false. Next time, on Fallen Angels, he was late.
To seeing a patient because he was getting high.
I finally speak to the young woman at the center of the story.
I think the police found the drugs, Well, they just found the meth because Carmen, I guess, was able to hide the heroine. Then right before I overdosed, he was like trying to have sex with me, and then I think I just like passed out. I knew he had to get out of my life.
But even with our main witness on the record, we face a battle to get the story out there.
Said cutting the whistleblowers as unethical, and I don't. I can't stand by it.
When I think about the class on Marx Walls, I just pictures just pulsating with the rage and frustration in that room.
That's next time on Fallen Angels. Fallen Angels The Story of California Corruption is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with Best Case Studios. I'm Paul Pringle. This show is based on my book Bad City, Peril and Power in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels was written by Isabel Evans, Adam Pinkus, and Brent Katz. Isabel Evans is our producer. Brent Katz is co producer. Associate producers are
Hanna Leebowitz Lockhart and On Pajo Locke. Executive producers are Me, Paul Pringle, Joe Picarello, and Adam Pinkus for Best Case Studios. Original music is by James Newberry. This episode was edited by Max Michael Miller, with assistants from Nisha Venkat, additional editings, Hound design, and additional music by Dean White. Mary Ann Warren's transcript is read by Jennifer Morris. Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvin and Adam Almarik are consulting producers. Our iHeart
team is Ali Perry and Carl Catle. Follow and rate Fallen Angels. Wherever you get your podcasts,