San Mateo County releases Batmobile report

Supervisors voted unanimously to release the 47-page report by Winifred Smith, a retired Alameda County Superior Court judge and former deputy attorney general in the California Attorney General’s Office who now works as a consultant with the firm ADR Services.

Smith was tapped to conduct an investigation into decisions by the Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney’s Office to investigate a potential case of fraud surrounding the purchase of a replica of a 1966 Batmobile.

Bay Area real estate broker Sam Anagnostou paid Fiberglass Freaks, a shop in Logansport, Indiana, owned by Mark Racop, $210,000 to build the replica vehicle. He did not receive the vehicle after making payments over a period of years from 2017 through 2020, and Anagnostou filed a complaint with the Atherton Police Department in mid-2021.

The department referred the case to the DA’s Office following its investigation but the office ultimately declined to file charges at the time. The San Mateo County Superior Court also dismissed Anagnostou’s civil case against Racop after deciding the matter should be taken up in an Indiana court.

Launching investigations

Despite the DA’s office declining to take on the case, then-Sheriff Carlos Bolanos directed Lt. Cmdr. Michael Leishman, as leader of the Vehicle Theft and Recovery Task Force, to investigate the case after Bolanos received a direct call from Anagnostou briefly detailing his take on the potential fraud in late 2021.

The investigation would eventually lead to four sheriff deputies, including Leishman, traveling to Indiana to conduct a raid on Racop’s shop with support from local law enforcement and the intention of extraditing Racop. According to the report, officers did not find a completed Batmobile during the raid and it was believed that Racop had accepted a wire transfer of $40,000 from Anagnostou under false pretenses after selling his Batmobile to another purchaser.

Days before the raid, Deputy District Attorney Marie McLaughlin filed two felony complaints against Racop unbeknownst to District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe or Chief Deputy District Attorney Sean Gallagher, according to the report.

Ultimately, Wagstaffe made the decision to dismiss the complaint after learning of them through media reports and seeking additional information on the facts of the case, he told Smith. No conflict of interest was discovered, he said to Smith, but he decided a San Mateo County juror would not convict Racop based on the facts. He also told her he didn’t think county residents would want the office to spend taxpayer dollars on the issue.

“There is a general philosophy in the District Attorney’s Office that if a party files in civil court to resolve a business dispute and the case is not successful they cannot use the district attorney as a tool to go after the person criminally,” read the section of the report pertaining to Smith’s interview with Wagstaffe. “‘The ‘Batmobile’ case fell into the category of cases that should have remained in the civil court.”

In retrospect, Wagstaffe told Smith he would not have filed a criminal complaint given the facts but said his experienced prosecutors may have seen the case differently as they were making decisions in real time. Alternatively, Bolanos told Smith he would not change how the matter was handled.

Conclusions, resolutions

No legal conclusions are made in the report, and Smith did not share any opinions on civil or criminal liability. But she did suggest that some procedural changes could reduce the likelihood that a future investigation would spark public distrust as the Batmobile case did.

But Smith argued that Bolanos’ direct response to Anagnostou’s complaint — and admission that concerns from those who he didn’t know were rerouted — was indicative of unequal access and treatment to county residents. She also argued the Sheriff’s Office could have had a better process for objectively screening whether a case “falls outside the mission of a department or task force” to potentially “prompt closer scrutiny of the need for the investigation or suggest parameters for the scope of an investigation.”

As for the District Attorney’s Office, Smith asserts that the facts that ultimately resulted in the complaint’s dismissal could have been known before it was filed and that prosecutors could have conducted the evaluation into whether the case would be successful in a trial beforehand as well. She called for a more robust pre-filing review in certain instances, which she said could serve as a “dragnet” for cases requiring higher level scrutiny.

“Liability notwithstanding, examination of facts surrounding the county officials’ decisions offer an opportunity to examine their impact on the public’s trust and confidence in the officials and the institutions they lead,” Smith wrote in the report, noting “the bare facts are that significant resources of man hours and money were expended to understand a messy contractual relationship compounded by the Byzantine business practices of one of the contractors.”

Smith also suggested an additional conflict of interest training could be of benefit while noting current practices dispelled conflict concerns in this case. Anagnostou made campaign contributions to both Wagstaffe and Bolanos in 2020 but neither of the elected officials played active roles in the investigations of their responsive departments, Smith found. By delegating work to others in their department, both electeds squashed concerns of a conflict of interest, she said.

Supervisors shared appreciation for the report’s suggestion and support for releasing it to the public in the name of transparency. Supervisor David Canepa also suggested that Wagstaffe and Sheriff Christina Corpus provide written responses to the report. The board previously agreed to pay up to $75,000 for Smith’s work. So far, $55,000 has been billed and more invoices may be issued but Nibbelin said he doesn’t expect expenses to surpass the maximum threshold.

Having read the report, County Attorney John Nibbelin asserts that nothing illegal occurred but argued the perception of favoritism was at issue. Nibbelin also lauded the report as a well-done, independently developed document that lays out the incident and provides logical recommendations.

“Folks here acted pursuant to law,” Nibbelin said. “It’s not imminently clear to me that anything went wrong per se. I think it’s a question of judgment, appearance, perception. And maybe insofar as something went wrong, it’s perhaps a little less consideration of how things would be perceived and frankly whether or not at the end of the day this is the best way to use county resources.”