Academy finds awards fee scam

By Stacy Matros
Assistant City Editor

When over 200 USC students were denied bleacher seating at the 69th annual Academy Awards March 24, administrative officials at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences discovered that for the past seven years, a 46-year-old woman had been fraudulently charging students at USC and El Camino College for seating to Academy Awards shows, pocketing upward of $10,000, officials at the Academy said.
Candace Powell, who is also known as Candi, claimed to be a USC student in the School of Public Administration. Numerous attempts to contact Powell by telephone and in person were unsuccessful and all requests for an interview went unanswered.
An official investigation into the matter has been conducted by Academy head of security Chris Berglund. The investigation named Powell and Joseph DiSante, head of security at ABC, as those responsible for taking the money.
Even though he is named in the report, DiSante denies any involvement.
"I am just sick inside over this," DiSante said. "I was used and lied to by someone I trusted."
DiSante said he had been aware that Powell was charging for seats but he understood it to be a purely voluntary payment, the proceeds of which would go to cover Powell's recruiting costs and the remainder to an undisclosed charity.
"She said she donated to the Northridge quake relief fund and the Kobe disaster relief fund," DiSante said. "I was even invited to a check presentation ceremony."
Powell told DiSante that she was a student at the USC School of Public Administration, but the only record the school has of her is "unauthorized withdrawal" from a 12-unit schedule in the fall of 1993, officials at the School of Public Administration said.
In Berglund's investigation, Powell told him she had donated some of the proceeds to the School of Public Administration, but no records were found.
When Academy officials discovered last year that students were being charged and the proceeds allegedly donated to these charities, DiSante and Powell were told to stop charging immediately.
"As well-intentioned as it was, the Academy felt we shouldn't be charging. I made that very clear to Candi on more than one occasion," DiSante said.
After that initial discussion, DiSante said he felt the matter was closed. However, when 200 of the 375 USC students did not get seating this year, DiSante said he was shocked to find that Powell had been charging them.
DiSante spoke with Powell and asked her about charging the students when she called him from a pay phone March 25, the morning after the awards. DiSante said Powell denied all involvement.
This year, USC students paid $10 each for a seat in the north section of the bleachers in front of the Shrine Auditorium after answering a flier, which was not widely distributed. Many students said the process was not well-advertised.
In past years, Berglund said students had been charged over $35 for a ticket.
The students who answered the flier or had otherwise found out about the opportunity were told to attend a mandatory information session where Powell instructed them what to wear, what to bring and where to go for the event. She also collected a payment of $10 from each of them and told them if they had any questions they were to call an assigned student liaison. She said they were never, under any circumstances, to call ABC or the Academy.
"She gave us a whole list of rules and told us to bring a sack lunch and six rolls of film because we would have to wait before we got seated," said Neha Shah, a freshman majoring in business.
Powell first came to ABC as a student out of El Camino College, according to employment records. She acted as a recruiter for audiences to fill live television show tapings for ABC, DiSante said.
When the Academy decided to set aside a certain amount of seats and fill them with people the employees knew, Powell, who had worked with ABC, was a logical choice, DiSante said.
"When Desert Storm came down (in 1991) it was decided to put people in the bleachers that we knew," DiSante said. "We needed the idea of a comfort zone so we decided to use USC students because we felt they would appreciate it and because the location is so close."
The Academy set aside a number of seats for the students at no charge to create this "comfort zone." Powell's job was to find interested students. The job was on a volunteer basis and she was not employed by ABC or the Academy.
"It's frustrating because we don't control the money and we don't control who we are dealing with because they are not employees of the Academy," said Rick Robertson, executive administrator for the Academy.
Students just recently began to receive refunds, said Jonathan Schwartz, lead student organizer and student liaison to Powell.
Schwartz also said Powell has no plans to return money to those who were seated or those who were not.
No legal action is planned by the Academy, Robertson said, but the Academy has no plans to work with Powell or DiSante in the future.
"The people involved in this are not going to be involved any more," Robertson said. "That's our remedy."
The Academy is also planning to reevaluate the seating arrangement at the awards show.
"Clearly we've got lots of movie fans who are willing to camp out overnight for seats, so we have to look at them also," Robertson said.