perjury

WASHINGTON — A federal jury convicted an infertility specialist, who admitted inseminating patients with his own semen, of 52 counts of fraud and perjury Wednesday.

On the fourth day of jury deliberations in Alexandria, Va., Dr. Cecil Jacobson was found guilty of lying to women about the identity of the sperm donor used in their artificial insemination procedures and of telling other women that they were pregnant when they were not.

The case has provoked an inbtense debate, raising disturbing ethical questions about medical practices and the doctor/patient relationship and initiating calls for tougher regulation of sperm banks and fertility clinics.

Critics contended that Jacobson’s behavior violated his patients’ right to privacy and their right to be fully informed about their treatments.

Furthermore, the case is expected to prompt action on the federal or state level toward tighter controls on the fertility industry, which is now only loosely regulated. Such legislation is already pending on Capitol Hill.

Jacobson, 55, who may have fathered as many as 75 children in the Washington area during the late 1970s and early 1980s, faces up to 280 years in prison and $500,000 in fines when he is sentenced May 8.

Jacobson showed no reaction when the verdict was delivered but said afterward: “I spent my life trying to help women have children. It’s a shock to be found guilty of trying to help people. . . . I certainly did not willfully or intentionally harm anyone. . . . I did not break any law.”

Prosecutor Randy Bellows, who characterized Jacobson to the eight-woman, four-man jury as “a man who routinely lies to his own patients,” declined to say whether he would recommend that Jacobson go to jail.

Jacobson, who remains free on bond, is expected to appeal.

Jury foreman Daniel Richard told reporters gathered outside the courtroom that “we knew Jacobson was lying to those patients.” Another juror, Deborah Earman, said that she believed Jacobson “was a good man” who “went wrong somewhere and mistreated a lot of women. He definitely did some wrong.”

Jean Blair, a former patient who testified that Jacobson had told her six times that she was pregnant and had miscarried, said she hopes that Jacobson goes to jail. Her husband, James Blair, said Jacobson “fooled a lot of people for a long time and I’m glad he didn’t fool this jury.”

Jacobson is a former George Washington University geneticist believed to have been the first physician to perform amniocentesis in the United States. For a long time, he was one of only a few practitioners in the Washington area who could perform the prenatal procedure, which detects Down’s syndrome and other abnormalities in a developing fetus.

Later, Jacobson opened his Reproductive Genetics Center Ltd. It was while treating women there that the incidents for which he was charged occurred. In addition to lying to them about the source of the semen he used, he was also charged with fooling 10 women into thinking that they were pregnant by injecting them with unusually frequent doses of a hormone that he knew would create false positive results in a pregnancy test. Later, the prosecutor charged, he told the women that their fetuses had died and been reabsorbed by their bodies.

A series of witnesses–who testified anonymously out of concern for their children–said that Jacobson had told them he would find donors who would match the physical characteristics of the patients’ husbands and that the donor would not be aware of their identity. Genetic tests on 15 of the children, however, showed that Jacobson was 99.99% likely to have been the father, the prosecution said.

But defense attorney James Tate argued that Jacobson had been very successful in helping many high-risk women become pregnant and give birth to healthy babies. Jacobson, testifying in his own behalf, said he was unaware that the hormone he was using could cause false positive pregnancy test results.

In comments made before the trial, Jacobson acknowledged that he had used his own semen, saying that he did not believe he had done anything wrong. He said that he believed his own fresh semen was more effective than a bank’s frozen sperm. And, he said, because he had been faithful to his wife, he was confident he would not transmit any dangerous infectious diseases to his patients.

There is some evidence that Jacobson’s actions, while unusual, were not isolated. The results of a 1987 survey conducted by the federal Office of Technology Assessment–virtually ignored at the time–showed that as many as 2% of the fertility doctors polled had done exactly the same thing as Jacobson, using their own sperm to inseminate patients.

In a separate case several years earlier, Jacobson was prohibited from practicing clinical medicine in Virginia after the state medical board determined that he had misled women who had paid $5,000 for fertility treatments. Jacobson, a native of Utah, returned there to conduct privately funded genetic research.

L.A. County prosecutors plan to file additional corruption charges this week against City Councilman Curren Price, who is already facing multiple counts of grand theft and perjury for allegedly voting in favor of projects his wife had a financial interest in, multiple sources told The Times.

The charges were expected to be made public Thursday during a pretrial hearing in downtown L.A., according to three people with knowledge of the situation, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about an ongoing criminal case.

In June 2023, Price was charged with 10 counts of grand theft by embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest. Prosecutors said Price’s wife — Del Richardson, founder of the consulting company Del Richardson & Associates — received “payments totaling more than $150,000 between 2019 and 2021 from developers before [Price] voted to approve projects.”

The perjury charges stem from a claim that Price didn’t list his wife’s income on disclosure forms. Prosecutors also accused Price of theft by embezzlement for bilking the city out of tens of thousands of dollars by placing Richardson on his city-issued healthcare plan between 2013 and 2017, before they were legally married.

Price’s attorney, Michael Schafler, called the new charges “nothing more than an attempt to pile on to a weak case.”

“They have gone back as much as 6 years, combing through thousands and thousands of votes, to find a couple more allegedly conflicted votes, hoping that the public will overlook the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that Councilmember Price was aware of the alleged conflicts when he voted for the agenda items,” Schafler said in a statement.

The original criminal complaint was filed roughly four years after a Times investigation found Price had repeatedly cast votes that affected housing developers and other firms listed as clients of his wife’s consulting company.

The new charges relate to similar conduct related to votes that Price cast, according to two of the sources. One of the sources said the votes related to contracts for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city’s housing authority.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said a press release would be issued later on Tuesday.

In an October 2023 motion seeking to dismiss the charges, Price’s legal team argued prosecutors failed to show the payments to Richardson had any influence on the councilman’s votes. Many of the votes described in the criminal complaint were also approved by an overwhelming majority of the council, meaning Price did not swing any one decision that could financially benefit Richardson.

Schafler also argued the embezzlement charges are invalid because Price did not have control over the funds used to pay for Richardson’s healthcare, which is a required element of the crime under California law. Price’s conduct might meet the definition of grand theft, Schafler wrote in 2023, but the statute of limitations for that crime had long expired.

A judge rejected Schafler’s motion. Price is expected to face a preliminary hearing later this year.

Price, who was first elected in 2013, must leave office due to term limits at the end of 2026. Several candidates have already launched campaigns to replace him in a district that stretches from the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown to 95th Street in South L.A.

Times Staff Writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

Only a few months ago, former Irvine Vice Mayor Tammy Kim had aspirations of returning to the City Council she previously served on for four years.

Now her immediate goal is to fight off charges that could put her in prison for several years.

The Orange County district attorney’s office announced Thursday afternoon that Kim was charged with 10 felonies tied to allegedly lying about her residency during her City Council tenure and while campaigning for mayor last fall.

Kim was formally charged with three felony counts of perjury by declaration, three felony counts of filing a false document, and one felony count each of a public official aiding the illegal casting of votes, of filing false nominations papers, of knowing of the registration of someone not entitled to vote and of voter registration fraud. She was also charged with a misdemeanor of making a false statement.

She could spend up to 11 years and two months in state prison and county jail if convicted on all counts.

She is scheduled to be arraigned Friday morning.

Kim briefly responded to a call from The Times, saying she was advised not to share too much per her attorney, Caroline Hahn.

“We’re entering a not guilty plea,” Kim said.

Hahn added that she and her client “planned to launch a vigorous defense” but did not answer further questions.

Kim is accused of using two fraudulent addresses while running for mayor in the November 2024 election and then in a City Council special election in early 2025, according to the criminal complaint. She owned a condo in the city’s 3rd District, where she had lived since 2015, according to a separate lawsuit filed against Kim to get her thrown off the City Council ballot.

Kim won election to the Irvine City Council in November 2020, receiving nearly 44,000 votes a 14-person, top-three-candidate race.

At that time, city elections in Irvine used an at-large voting system, meaning candidates could live anywhere in the city.

The city moved to district elections in the fall 2024, requiring council members to live in the districts they represent. Only voters from those districts could vote for those candidates.

Kim served until November 2024 when she ran for and ultimately lost a mayoral campaign to Councilmember Larry Agran by a margin of nearly 5,000 votes.

The district attorney’s office believes Kim improperly used an address to run for mayor, no longer claiming to live in the 3rd District condo she had owned for a decade.

To run for mayor, Kim changed her California driver’s license and her voter registration to a home in the 5th District, where she never lived, according to the criminal complaint.

The home belonged to a family Kim met through a Korean teaching class, the complaint alleges. Kim did not inform the family that she was using their address, according to the complaint.

She has been charged with certifying that address as her own under the penalty of perjury.

Kim eventually finished her campaign and voted in November’s mayoral race based out of the 5th Diistrict home.

Shortly after her defeat, Kim declared her candidacy in December to fill the now- vacant 5th District seat, which Agran left after winning the mayoral election.

Kim eventually found a room in another 5th District home on Jan. 10 and changed her California driver’s registration that same day, according to the complaint. She then filed new nomination paperwork with the new 5th District address, according to the complaint.

Later that month, former mayoral candidate Ron Scolesdang sued Kim, claiming that she was fraudulently using an incorrect address. Scolesdang had hired a private investigator to monitor Kim, according to that lawsuit.

Kim eventually dropped out of the race on Feb. 7, the same day a Superior Court judge removed her name from the ballot.

Betty Franco Martinez won the special election.