The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has launched an extensive investigation of misconduct within the county's community college district.
Wednesday morning, deputies with search warrants confiscated a slew of internal records and computer equipment from multiple campuses.
The sheriff's investigators have primarily focused on fraud cases at the Maricopa County Community College District from the past five years. Those cases have been documented by internal auditors and included findings of falsified enrollment, theft, misappropriation of scholarship money and nepotism.
"There's a lot of smoke there and we're going to try and put out the fire," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said.
Deputies served warrants at Mesa, Scottsdale and Estrella Mountain in Phoenix and the district's headquarters in Tempe.
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The sheriff's investigation is in its infancy and Arpaio said he does not know whether it will produce criminal charges against any current or past college employees.
Wednesday's searches came amid a flurry of media reports about misconduct at the nation's largest junior college system.
In October, the Tribune published a series of articles detailing the fraud cases now being investigated by the sheriff.
The newspaper found that malfeasance had for years gone largely unpunished, with colleges routinely shifting troublesome employees to new jobs or allowing them to resign quietly. When criminal activity surfaced, district officials did not notify law enforcement.
College district Chancellor Rufus Glasper acknowledged the Tribune's findings and began several internal probes to find weaknesses in the district's policies that allowed problems to persist for years.
"Anytime we are made aware of potential wrongdoing, we will investigate and we will take action," Glasper said.
At the colleges, the scene was chaotic.
Students were attending classes on the second day of the semester while deputies blocked-off buildings, pored over stacks of records and trucked away possible evidence.
Arpaio said he would not disclose what was removed from each college or what possible wrongdoing it was related to.
In 2003, a district auditor found that at least $4,900 in travel money had gone missing from the Mesa campus' athletic department, records show. That inquiry began when a cashier reported that unused cash advances had never been returned.
Virginia Stahl, vice president for student affairs at the Scottsdale campus, said investigators were looking for documents tied to the Maricopa Institute for Art and Entertainment Technology.
An auditor found that for several years the performing-arts program had enrolled its employees and relatives in classes to protect them from cancellation and took thousands in scholarships to pay its bills that should have gone to other students.
The Tribune investigation discovered that the program's director had been paid tens of thousands of dollars for work his salary already covered and for work he never did.
Scottsdale College is up for re-accreditation, which will determine if the college can continue to offer degrees.
The sheriff's investigation is not expected to influence the process, Stahl said.
Arpaio said his deputies also gave a court order to Mesa Community College's Business & Industry Institute.
Glasper recently put the institute's director on administrative leave, following concerns that she had misappropriated district funds.
