USC's Drug Peddling Dean

Summary

Campus Files: USC's Drug Peddling Dean – A Detailed Summary

In the April 30, 2025 episode of Campus Files, hosted by Audacy, listeners are taken on an in-depth journey into one of the most scandalous episodes to rock the University of Southern California (USC). Titled "USC's Drug Peddling Dean," the episode unravels the complex investigation led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Pringle, uncovering the dark underbelly of a prestigious academic institution.

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1. The Incident at Hotel Constance ([01:37] – [06:00])

The story begins on a serene day in Pasadena, California, March 4, 2016, at the historic Hotel Constance. Margo Gray sets the scene:

"It was a cool mid-60s day in Pasadena... For Devon, the manager on duty, everything seemed routine. Then a call from housekeeping. They needed him in room 304 immediately."

Inside Room 304, an unconscious woman was found. Initially perceived as a simple overdose, the gravity of the situation deepens when it's revealed that the room was booked by Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the dean of USC's Keck School of Medicine—a highly respected figure in the academic community.

Paul Pringle introduces himself:

"I'm Paul Pringle, host of What Next from Slate.com... I've been working at the LA Times for just shy of 24 years."

Pringle highlights his extensive experience and the significance of his previous reporting on USC, including the athletic director scandal involving Pat Hayden.

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2. Beginning the Investigation ([06:00] – [08:45])

In the spring of 2016, a tip about the incident reaches Paul Pringle, positioning him as the ideal investigator. However, Pringle faces unexpected challenges:

"I got nothing. And I tried to speak to the police chief, made requests there, nothing but silence." ([07:15])

Both the Pasadena Police Department and USC exhibit unprecedented levels of secrecy, compelling Pringle to employ relentless door-knocking and persistent follow-ups without success.

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3. Assembling the Investigation Team ([13:47] – [15:19])

After months of dead ends, Pringle's determination leads him to confront internal resistance within the LA Times, exacerbated by the paper's sale to the Tribune Company. Recognizing the escalating challenges, Pringle collaborates with Matt Lake, the city editor, to form a clandestine team of five reporters aiming to "flood the zone" with investigative efforts:

"We decided to put four more reporters on this, just to sort of... force the issue, kind of flood the zone." ([14:05])

This strategic move is intended to amplify the pressure needed to expose the truth despite institutional pushback.

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4. Breakthrough: Uncovering Sarah Warren’s Story ([15:35] – [22:00])

The investigation pivots towards Sarah Warren, a young woman whose life was entangled with Dr. Puliafito. Pringle discovers:

"He started supporting her completely. He provided all the drugs to her and later to her circle of friends, including her underage brother, who was 17 at the time." ([20:51])

Through meticulous research and building trust with Sarah's distraught family, Pringle obtains compelling evidence, including photos, videos, and firsthand accounts of Sarah's struggle with addiction and Puliafito's manipulative control.

A pivotal moment occurs on St. Patrick's Day, 2017, when Marianne Warren arranges a lunch meeting with Puliafito:

"He admitted that people had, in fact, been kicked out of rehab because of him. He also claimed he was in love with Sarah and that he couldn't stop helping her." ([22:36])

This confrontation yields incriminating admissions from Puliafito, solidifying the foundation for a groundbreaking exposé.

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5. Publication Struggles and Editorial Suppression ([23:31] – [29:32])

Despite having "impeccable" and "ironclad" evidence, Pringle and his team encounter significant hurdles:

"At the very last minute, the top editor killed the story and he never gave me a good reason." ([11:02])

When they attempt to publish, the story undergoes dilution:

"They stripped out the most damaging material to USC... They wouldn't back down. And they did publish that version of the story." ([28:43])

Furthermore, the story's visibility is compromised by moving it from the prominent Sunday edition to Monday, diminishing its initial impact. Nonetheless, the publication sends ripples across the media landscape:

"It was immediately our biggest story of the year in terms of online readership." ([29:32])

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6. Continued Investigation and Expansion of the Scandal ([29:32] – [34:37])

Undeterred by the initial publication, Pringle and his team continue to delve deeper. They uncover additional victims, including Dora, whose newborn son died from methamphetamine exposure. Despite thorough investigations spanning two years, Puliafito faces no criminal charges, though the California Medical Board revokes his medical license:

"They tried to soft pedal it... the editors took out the fact that this guy was a drug peddler." ([29:55])

Pringle also reveals that USC secured a settlement from the Warren family, including an ironclad NDA that mandated the destruction of critical evidence:

"They required the Warren family to turn over all of that evidence... that was done at the direction and supervision of USC's attorneys." ([32:00])

Tragically, Sarah and her brother succumb to addiction-related ailments in 2023, underscoring the deep personal costs of the scandal.

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7. Aftermath and Institutional Changes ([34:37] – [35:15])

Paul Pringle's relentless pursuit leads to significant repercussions within the LA Times and broader journalistic circles. He authors a book titled "Bad Peril and Power in the City of Angels" and launches a podcast series, "Fallen Angels," to further document the saga.

The LA Times undergoes a cultural renaissance following new ownership, embracing a newsroom environment that prioritizes integrity and accountability:

"The shift in newsroom culture was immediate... the difference couldn't be more stark." ([34:52])

Pringle emphasizes the crucial role of journalism in holding powerful institutions like USC accountable:

"That is the newspaper's essential role. It should be its number one priority to hold other institutions to account." ([35:15])

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8. Conclusion: The Imperative of Investigative Journalism

The "USC's Drug Peddling Dean" episode of Campus Files serves as a poignant reminder of the vital need for tenacious investigative journalism. Paul Pringle's journey, marked by perseverance against formidable institutional barriers, ultimately fosters accountability and transparency within one of America's leading universities. The episode not only chronicles a harrowing tale of addiction and abuse of power but also celebrates the unwavering commitment of journalists to uncover and report the truth.

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Notable Quotes

• Paul Pringle on encountering unprecedented secrecy:

  "This kind of silence over what could have been. Again, it should have just been a routine matter." ([07:40])

• Sarah Warren on her struggle:

  "She wanted to speak. She wanted to break free of Carmen Puliafito once and for all." ([19:20])

• Paul Pringle reflecting on the importance of accountability:

  "That is the newspaper's essential role. It should be its number one priority to hold other institutions to account." ([35:15])

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Campus Files continues to shed light on the hidden truths behind America's revered institutions, offering listeners a critical and unvarnished view of the challenges that lie beneath the surface of collegiate excellence.

Transcript

[Margo Gray]

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[Paul Pringle]

Now we're in a new era.

[Margo Gray]

It can be easy to get discouraged, frustrated, but you can't afford not to pay attention.

[Paul Pringle]

You need trustworthy independent journalism to cut.

[Margo Gray]

Through the noise and hold power to account.

[Paul Pringle]

I'm Mary Harris, host of What Next from Slate.com we are a daily news podcast with a kind of transparent, smart.

[Margo Gray]

Yet tongue in cheek analysis you can.

[Paul Pringle]

Only find at Slate.

[Margo Gray]

Follow and listen to what Next wherever.

[Paul Pringle]

You get your podcasts.

[Margo Gray]

It was a cool mid-60s day in Pasadena, California, March 4, 2016. The afternoon was quiet at the historic Hotel Constance, a nearly century old landmark on Colorado Boulevard. For Devon, the manager on duty, everything seemed routine. Then a call from housekeeping. They needed him in room 304 immediately. The room was registered to a man named Carmen. Inside, a woman was unconscious.

[Paul Pringle]

My girlfriend here had a bunch of drinks. She's sleeping. Yeah, she's absolutely breathing.

[Margo Gray]

But the woman Carmen calls his girlfriend wasn't just asleep or drunk. She was overdosing on ghb.

[Paul Pringle]

No, she's sick. She was sitting up in bed and passed out. So, I mean, I'm a doctor actually. So.

[Margo Gray]

And Carmen, he wasn't just any hotel guest. He was Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the dean of USC's Keck School of Medicine.

[Paul Pringle]

Foreign.

[Margo Gray]

I'm Margo Gray. This week on CAMPUS Files the story of USC's drug peddling Dean and the reporter who fought for a year to expose the truth.

[Paul Pringle]

I'm an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times and the author of Bad City, Peril and Power in the City of Angels, which is a look at a major corruption scandal in Los Angeles. I've been working at the LA Times for just shy of 24 years.

[Margo Gray]

That's Paul Pringle. He's being a little humble here about his credentials. Paul has received journalism's highest award, the Pulitzer Prize, three times, one of those for his reporting on USC. He's been a reporter in the LA area since 1984, and in that time he's reported on the University of Southern California or USC on more than one occasion.

[Paul Pringle]

One thing that we did was an investigation of the athletic director, Pat Hayden, who had taken over a charity for poor kids and in time began using the charity to pay himself and family members significant amount of money out of the charity's funds. So I did have that history with usc, and it was a difficult history in terms of the school was not cooperative with me. And that became even more so when I got onto this latest scandal.

[Margo Gray]

So in the spring of 2016, when a tip about USC came to the paper, Paul was an obvious choice to investigate.

[Paul Pringle]

Well, the tip actually came through a photographer at the paper, and he just happened to bump into someone who worked at a hotel in Pasadena at a family party. And this person, Devon Khan, the hotel employee, was on duty when a young woman overdosed at the hotel.

[Margo Gray]

Ordinarily, the LA Times might not report on an overdose, but this case was different. The room where it happened was booked and occupied by Carmen Puliafido.

[Paul Pringle]

He was the dean of the medical school. He was a major fundraiser for the school.

[Margo Gray]

Carmen's expertise in fundraising, combined with his background as an eye surgeon, earned him a spot among the top 25 highest paid research university executives in the U.S. he regularly spoke at national conferences, served on the governing board of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, and managed thousands of professors and clinicians at usc. So given Carmen's background and the fact that it was a Thursday afternoon, just before spring midterms, it was especially odd to find him at the scene of an overdose.

[Paul Pringle]

Carmen tried to talk Devon Khan again, the hotel manager, out of calling 911. He refused that, and he did call because, you know, there were illegal drugs found in the room. And again, this young woman was in real distress.

[Margo Gray]

Fortunately, the woman was taken to the hospital, but the hotel manager was no less shaken because Carmen wasn't arrested. But despite the meth found in the.

[Paul Pringle]

Room, he did everything he could to get it addressed. He Filed a complaint with the city attorney's office. He contacted the president's office at USC and gave a detailed account of what he witnessed. So he was just about ready to give up when he bumped into my colleague at this party.

[Margo Gray]

So when this tip landed on Paul's desk, covering the incident felt like a no brainer.

[Paul Pringle]

Number one, it was news that there was the dean of the medical school was in this hotel room on a, I believe it was a Thursday afternoon in the middle of the school year with a young woman who overdosed. Oh, the other thing is that he resigned as dean three weeks after the overdose. And again, this was in the middle of the school term. That just doesn't happen.

[Margo Gray]

Paul figured the story would be straightforward to report, especially since it involved public records.

[Paul Pringle]

There was an ambulance at the hotel, there were police cars. So this is something you can't just sweep under the rug. And I thought this would be something I could get done fairly quickly. First thing I did was go down to the police station in person. Didn't want to do anything by phone or email. Walked into the station, told them what I had been told about this incident that happened just a few weeks earlier. Asked for the police report and any other records.

[Margo Gray]

But just like this wasn't your ordinary overdose, this was far from an ordinary public records case.

[Paul Pringle]

I got nothing. And I tried to speak to the police chief, made requests there, nothing but silence. And that continued for a very long time, for months. Something like this never happened to me in the past. This kind of silence over what could have been. Again, it should have just been a routine matter.

[Margo Gray]

Paul had never encountered this level of secrecy from the Pasadena police or any police department for that matter.

[Paul Pringle]

I started door knocking all over town trying to find the police officer or officers who responded to the overdose. Same thing with the paramedics. Untransparent as the police department was, USC was at a whole other level. I made an initial inquiry, complete silence to the point where they wouldn't even acknowledge receiving my phone calls and emails just so I could say in a story that they didn't respond to this request. I wanted to make sure that they got it. They wouldn't even do that.

[Margo Gray]

Paul was completely stonewalled. The Pasadena police, the city and USC all refused to talk about the incident.

[Paul Pringle]

I mean, there's no question USC is very influential throughout Southern California and even beyond its board of trustees. At the time I reported this story had 12 billionaires on it from various industries. It's always been a major part of the fabric of LA. Going back to the 19th century when the school was founded.

[Margo Gray]

In some ways, the strategy of silence worked. A tip from the hotel manager wasn't enough to build a story. The LA Times isn't a gossip column. But the silence was also a signal. If there really was nothing to the story, why were Pasadena and USC so tight lipped? What were they trying to hide? So Paul kept pressing.

[Paul Pringle]

Eventually I got a breakthrough by going sort of behind the scenes with somebody in a position of authority at the city and just making a case that, you know, this, this story is now about the city. It's not just about usc. The city of Pasadena is a public institution and it's not behaving that way. So after I made those sorts of inquiries and made that case, I finally got a police report that was written three months after the incident. So a retroactive police report, which I've never heard of, and even then I didn't get it for nearly two months after they wrote it retroactively, I also got an evidence report that again confirmed that methamphetamine was found in the room. But in this case, it also included the name of a witness to this. And that witness was Carmen Pugliafito. His name is now on the record. So now I had enough for a story.

[Margo Gray]

In the end, Paul's persistence paid off. He obtained 911 call records, including one featuring Carmen's voice, the same one you heard at the start of the episode. Maybe this would be a straightforward story after all. Even if it was taking longer than usual, Paul could now definitively report this. The dean of USC's prestigious medical school was in a hotel room with a young woman as she overdosed. And just three weeks later, he resigned.

[Paul Pringle]

I had enough for a story here. And typically a story like this will lead to other stories. Call it running and gunning. You don't get the whole story all at once, but you get enough to get things rolling. And that story leads to more tips, which leads to more stories. And that sort of continues until the full story does emerge. And that's what I expected to happen.

[Margo Gray]

After his editors and the paper's lawyers signed off on the piece, Paul and the LA Times team assembled a full report.

[Paul Pringle]

We created a video around the recording. Of course, we had photographs, documents. We were going to post online all this stuff. And at the very last minute, I was told that the top editor wanted to sleep on it, wanted to publish it, which was shocking. And I guess he slept on it. And then we had a meeting with me, the managing editor, my editor, Matt Lait, and in that meeting the top editor killed the story and he never gave me a good reason. I thought I'd be able to get a story done in a week or two to turned out it took 15 months. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail].

[Courtney Harrell]

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[Margo Gray]

My son slammed like $6 worth of.

[Paul Pringle]

Blueberries in five minutes.

[Courtney Harrell]

This is a podcast about all the ways money comes into our lives and then leaves again. Which of course we all have a lot of feelings about.

[Paul Pringle]

I really want these things. I want to own a house, I want to have a child. But this morning I really wanted a coffee.

[Courtney Harrell]

Because whatever you are buying or not buying or saving or spending, at the end of the day, money is always about more than your balance. Courtney I'm Courtney Harrell and this is what We Spend, Listen to and follow what We Spend in Odyssey Original Podcast available now. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Margo Gray]

This episode is brought to you by Enterprise Mobility. From fleet management to flexible truck rentals to technology solutions, Enterprise Mobility helps businesses find the right mobility solutions so they can find new opportunities. Because if your business is on the road, they want to make sure it's on the road to success. Enterprise Mobility Moving you moves the world. Find your road@enterprise mobility.com it's mid February 2017, nearly a year since the overdose. Paul has spent months digging into the story only for it to be killed.

[Paul Pringle]

Unfortunately, this newspaper was sold to the Tribune Company and things just started going downhill.

[Margo Gray]

At the time, the news team didn't trust the editor in chief, who also happened to be the publisher of the paper, a violation of journalistic norms.

[Paul Pringle]

The newsroom was in a very bad place. Then these editors, the top Editors did not have the support of the newsroom at all. In a way, this was shocking, but not surprising given the direction we were going in. But we weren't gonna stand for it. And my media editor, Matt Lake, the city editor, contacted me the next day and said, let's pursue this anyway, which I was gonna do no matter what. And he suggests we put together a bigger team of reporters. And so we decided to put four more reporters on this, just to sort of, as he put it, force the issue, kind of flood the zone. We did this secretly.

[Margo Gray]

The only explanation Paul received for why the story was killed was that no source from USC had directly linked Carmen's resignation to the overdose. This reasoning effectively put USC in control of the narrative, but it also gave Paul and his newly formed secret team a starting point. The five reporters spread out across the city, determined to find someone high up at USC willing to talk, even off the record. But still. Silence.

[Paul Pringle]

Nobody at USC would talk. We visited these folks at their homes. We tried everything. The leadership there had that place on ice. Nobody was speaking.

[Margo Gray]

That left them with only one other avenue to explore. They knew the young woman's first name, Sarah, along with her approximate age and physical description. But in a city of over 10 million people, it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

[Paul Pringle]

In the meantime, we kept pushing and pushing, and I was doing more and more record sweeps through public databases. And I've been doing this for months. Got a lot of Sarahs, but none of them fit the description.

[Margo Gray]

But one day, Paul came across a property in Pasadena linked to Carmen. And right next to his name was Sarah's. Sarah Warren. Paul dug further and soon found a Facebook profile that matched both the name and physical description. He immediately shared his findings with Devon Kahn, the hotel manager, who reported the overdose. As we heard at the start of.

[Paul Pringle]

The episode, I went back to Devon Khan with photos of her that I took from, I think, Facebook. And after several tries of many different other Sarahs, we finally hit on the right one. Once we got her name, we were able through public records to find her family. I found out where her dad worked. I visited him there very discreetly. He was very distraught about what had happened to his daughter. He was going to think about whether he could speak to me about it. I was as gentle with him as I could be. I'm a father of two daughters. So while I was waiting to hear back from Paul Warren, the father, I get a call from the mom's therapist, Mary Warren, and her therapist. She's in meeting with the Therapist. She knows that I was trying to contact her, and a therapist puts me on the phone.

[Margo Gray]

Paul learned that carmen's involvement with sarah went far beyond the night of the overdose. Sarah had been battling drug addiction for years, Cycling in and out of rehab, trying to get clean. But each time she checked in, carmen, the dean of usc's medical school, was there to pull her out again.

[Paul Pringle]

She did just about everything she could do unaided to get clean. She kept enrolling in rehab. She had help from her parents when she would come back into their lives and he would undermine her. He would deliver drugs to her while she was in rehab. And this was several rehabs. When she would get out of a rehab, he would provide her drugs immediately and then drive away from the rehab. So he did this again and again.

[Margo Gray]

Sarah's parents were desperate for help, but the idea of going public with their daughter's struggle with addiction was an incredibly difficult decision.

[Paul Pringle]

They had been trying for, at that point, I think, about 20 months to try to extricate their daughter from polyafito's grasp. They tried everything. They called the police. Marianne had the therapist contact the FBI. They hired a private detective to try to find her. When sarah had disappeared on them again, Everywhere they turned, they got nowhere. In the end, they got advice from the private detective just to sort of go along with carmen, because he was concerned that if they didn't, he would disappear with her forever, and they'd never see their daughter again. They finally decided that we might be their best hope. The reporters at the newspaper, that happens a lot where people come to us after they've tried everything else. The police won't help them, the district attorney won't help them, Their employer won't help them. So they finally come to the newspaper. They try to finally get some justice, and that's what happened here.

[Margo Gray]

Once paul had earned the parents trust, they revealed a trove of photos and videos from sarah's phone, some of which included carmen.

[Paul Pringle]

Initially, maryanne would text me some samples, some stills from the video of him again doing drugs. And we met with the parents and the therapist again at a hotel down by the coast, and they turned over everything.

[Margo Gray]

Sarah, still in rehab at the time, agreed to speak. She didn't have access to a phone, so her dad put her on the line during a visit.

[Paul Pringle]

She wanted to speak. She wanted to break free of carmen polyafidal once and for all. And after that, we had other conversations where she would again secretly. You're not allowed cell phones in rehab. But there was one hard line phone. It Had a very long cord. She would take it into the bathroom at the rehab and call me on that phone.

[Margo Gray]

Through these interviews, Paul was able to piece together how Sarah had initially become involved with Carmen.

[Paul Pringle]

When she met him, she was 19 years old, very bright, attractive young woman, Troubled and searching, vulnerable. And she sort of ran away from home, if you can actually do that at her age. But, you know, she sort of disappeared on her family. She had had some difficulties in high school with alcohol, things like that. Nothing that a lot of families don't go through. And she, very briefly, was a call girl. This was as much about acting out than anything else. But during that time, she met Carmen, who was using this service, this prostitution service. And he just got his hooks into her, mainly through money. He started supporting her completely. He provided all the drugs to her and later to her circle of friends, including her underage brother, who was 17 at the time. And he. Yeah, he ended up basically controlling her life. So she was more or less a captive in that world.

[Margo Gray]

And Sarah was willing to admit all of this on the record with her name attached.

[Paul Pringle]

And it was a very brave thing to do. She was going to be named in this story. She was going to admit to her own criminal behavior with drugs, her brief time as a prostitute, and she thought that needed to be done. And she was concerned about other people, starting with her brother.

[Margo Gray]

The final piece Paul needed was something from Carmen himself.

[Paul Pringle]

He was keeping his hooks into the family this whole time, and he was constantly warning them about talking to me. He wanted to know what I was doing, what they might have told me.

[Margo Gray]

As it turned out, Carmen's constant hovering provided the perfect opportunity.

[Paul Pringle]

He wanted to have lunch with Maryanne. And she asked me, should I do it? Of course, I can't give her legal advice or anything like that, But I said, if you do do it, I'd like to help. She was frightened of the guy, very frightened of him. So they were really putting a lot of faith into us, the Warren family. In the end, she was just all in. And if she wavered a bit, I would have never put any kind of pressure on her. Never. Just the opposite. What we mainly hoped to get out of this was, again, enough incriminating material that it would force the top editor's hands further to publish the story.

[Margo Gray]

So on St. Patrick's Day, 2017, Marianne and Carmen arranged to meet for lunch at Blue Gold in Huntington Beach.

[Paul Pringle]

The idea was she would pick the restaurant. She would get there early. She would make sure that she was in a booth or a table where we could eavesdrop from the next table over, and I couldn't go because he knew what I looked like. So we had two of the other reporters go.

[Margo Gray]

Adam and Sarah, for Marianne's safety. Instead of wiring her, two LA Times reporters sat at an adjacent table taking notes while Paul anxiously waited outside.

[Paul Pringle]

It just worked beautifully. I mean, the lunch went on for almost three hours. He said a number of things that were very incriminating. And yes, as they were listening, they were typing texts to me and I was grabbing them down, you know, on the street.

[Margo Gray]

Carmen admitted that people had, in fact, been kicked out of rehab because of him. He also claimed he was in love with Sarah and that he, quote, couldn't stop helping her. With that, Paul and his team finally had all the pieces for a compelling and damning story. A story that Sarah wanted out as soon as possible to prevent Carmen from putting more patients at risk.

[Paul Pringle]

He was practicing the entire time? Yes. She would beg him not to go into work as a surgeon because his hands were shaking so bad.

[Margo Gray]

So with the support of the Warrens, Paul and his team presented their new story.

[Paul Pringle]

It was impeccable. It was as nailed down as the story could be. It was a dream story. You know, you make that joke. Well, it's not like we have it on video. Well, we did have this on video. It wasn't just someone's account. We had documentary proof in images and in other forms of documentation. So again, in a normal situation, we are congratulated by the top editors. Way to go. Great job. Let's get this thing in. We got exactly the opposite.

[Margo Gray]

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[Paul Pringle]

We had that story done the last couple of days in March of 2017. It could have run within a week. They knew that they can't kill this story. At least it didn't seem like they could. So they went into what I call delay in dilute mode. Let's keep it out of the paper as long as we can. Let's water it down as much as we can. Let's take the onus off USC as much as we can.

[Margo Gray]

The story had been thoroughly vetted by editors and lawyers, and it had ironclad reporting. But Paul and the team were still being questioned on various issues, like whether to include the fact that the hotel manager had called USC president to report the overdose days after it happened. Then Paul received a tip that made him even more exasperated.

[Paul Pringle]

This was my top source at usc. So he told me initially that Nikias told folks, his team, that there could be a bad story coming, an embarrassing story, but it won't come before the Book Festival.

[Margo Gray]

Paul is talking about the LA Times Festival of Books, which USC sponsors and hosts every spring.

[Paul Pringle]

Well, it should have come before the Book Festival. It was ready before the Book Festival, weeks before the Book Festival. But it didn't. And then he said later in a similar meeting that again, this story might happen, but it won't happen before commencement.

[Margo Gray]

And all this time, Sarah and her family were stuck waiting with Carmen looming over them.

[Paul Pringle]

They had given up on us because month after month went by and I never had a good reason to give them. I couldn't share what was going on internally with them in any kind of detail, certainly, but I couldn't go there. So my excuses were vague and they weren't very compelling.

[Margo Gray]

The Warrens hired celebrity attorney Mark Garrigus, who had represented high profile clients like Renona Ryder, Michael Jackson and Colin Kaepernick.

[Paul Pringle]

When I took that back to the managing editor, he had no concern whatsoever. He actually seemed relieved that they had a lawyer. And our suspicion was that he and his top editor would prefer that this become public through this celebrity attorney in a lawsuit or whatever, and we'd cover it that way. And that's around the time when I decided I would have to go to corporate and file a formal complaint against these folks.

[Margo Gray]

Finally, at his wit's end, Paul filed a complaint with the owner of the LA Times.

[Paul Pringle]

My one regret in all this is I didn't do that sooner. I should have done it in April when they put the brakes to the original second story. But I did it. And did it in writing and was prepared for the worst. When they called me in the next, it was like the next day or the day after that. The HR people, Cindy Ballard, said, no, we're going to take this very seriously. They worked day and night, even toward the end, and interviewed, I think about over at least 50 people. Eventually, as I was told by these folks, that the top badder was warned that if this story comes out through Mark Garagos before it does in the LA Times, that's going to be bad for the paper, but it will also be bad for you personally. And sure enough, within days, the story was finally published.

[Margo Gray]

But the story that was ultimately published turned out to be a watered down version.

[Paul Pringle]

At the very last minute, in a very unethical way, they went into the story and stripped out the most damaging material to usc. All the really damaging stuff. I mean, giving methamphetamine to a 17 year old, delivering methamphetamine and other drugs to someone in rehab, that all came out. They wouldn't back down. And they did publish that version of the story. So even when it was published, they did whatever they could to weaken it.

[Margo Gray]

To make matters worse, just before publication, the story was moved from the front page of the Sunday edition, the paper's most widely circulated day, to Monday, significantly cutting its reach. Still, despite all these setbacks, the story sent shockwaves through the media.

[Paul Pringle]

It just went nuts. It was all over the world because it was the novelty of it, a medical school dean being involved with these druggies and the overdose and everything else. So it was immediately our biggest story of the year in terms of online readership.

[Margo Gray]

As for usc, the story that they'd fought tooth and nail to keep under wraps was now exposed to the world.

[Paul Pringle]

They tried to soft pedal it. Oh, it was just an addiction problem. These things happen. And where our hearts go out to Dr. Puliafito and his family, that kind of stuff. And again, they had some cover for that because the editors took out the fact that this guy was a drug peddler.

[Margo Gray]

While USC publicly wished Carmen well, Paul and his colleagues were still hard at work reporting. Remember how Paul had initially planned for run and gun reporting, publishing a story and then following up on tips that came in afterward? Well, that's exactly what happened this time. And it turned out that Carmen wasn't just involved with Sarah and her younger brother. There was also another woman, Dora, and her newborn son.

[Paul Pringle]

He was supporting her in every way, including paying her rent. We had very good information that we published, including from Sarah Warren, that he was providing her with drugs, including methamphetamine. And one day, the baby didn't wake up. Fire department. I'm 26. Hello? Yes, I'm here. Baby not breathing. Are you there at the location right now? No, my girlfriend's there. How old is this child, sir? And the baby was later found to have had methamphetamine in his system.

[Margo Gray]

Dora's newborn baby died at just 25 days old.

[Paul Pringle]

They went to the sheriff's department. There was a very long investigation. Of course, Pugliafito denied that he gave Dora any drugs. They weren't cooperating with the investigation at all. We can debate whether the investigation was handled the way it should have been handled. It went on for, like, two years, and eventually they brought no charges.

[Margo Gray]

In fact, to this day, Carmen hasn't been charged with a single crime. The California Medical board conducted a thorough investigation, revoked his license to practice, and even turned over their findings to the DA but the DA ultimately chose not to pursue prosecution. Meanwhile, USC remained relentless in protecting the institution.

[Paul Pringle]

I found out that when they signed a deal with the Warren family, they gave them a settlement, and they had to sign an ironclad NDA as part of that. They required the Warren family to turn over all of that evidence, you know, all the visual evidence and other things, so that they could be destroyed. And that was done at the direction and supervision of USC's attorneys, including a former US attorney who was working for them at that time.

[Margo Gray]

After all of this, the Warrens left Los Angeles, moving around for a while before eventually settling in Texas. Carmen was finally out of their lives. But addiction itself self wasn't. On February 4, 2023, Sarah Warren passed away. The cause of death was acute pancreatitis due to chronic alcohol use. Just four months later, her younger brother Charles also passed away due to chronic alcohol use. Sarah was 27. Charles was 24.

[Paul Pringle]

It's just a tragedy upon a tragedy. Things seem to be going okay with both of them. I remained in touch, and then the addictions caught up with them.

[Margo Gray]

And as for Carmen, it appears that not much has changed.

[Paul Pringle]

Well, I know he tried, I believe, twice to get his medical license back, and that didn't work. In the hearing and the investigation, when he tried to get his license back, it came up that he was still involved with Dora, sending her money every month. He had failed, I think, three drug tests. He tried to claim they were atmospheric tests, you know, results or something like that. But anyway, the bottom line is he didn't get his license back.

[Margo Gray]

He's still around But Carmen is no longer a practicing doctor, thanks to the tireless efforts of Paul Pringle, Harriet Ryan, Adam Elmerich, Matt Hamilton and Sarah parvini of the LA Times. In 2022, Paul published a book about his reporting on this story. It's titled Bad Peril and Power in the City of Angels. He also just released a podcast series, Fallen Angels, about this story.

[Paul Pringle]

So I thought, yeah, it's important to get this out, not just what happened inside the newspaper, which to me is, you know, might be the most important thing in the whole story in terms of the bigger picture, but also, you know, the personal stories that were never told. So all of that I thought needed to be told, and that's why I decided to write the book.

[Margo Gray]

As for the LA Times, the editor and publisher, who had spent nearly a year slow rolling this story, were eventually let go. The paper was sold to a new owner. And Paul says the shift in newsroom culture was immediate.

[Paul Pringle]

It was day and night. It was like the old days again. And that has not changed. So the difference couldn't be more stark.

[Margo Gray]

For Paul, the change is heartening. After 40 years of reporting in LA, one thing has become clear to him. Powerful institutions like USC need someone to police them.

[Paul Pringle]

That is the newspaper's essential role. It should be its number one priority to hold other institutions to account, including universities. Universities are powerful, especially the size of usc. Another thing that I found extraordinary, unprecedented in my experience with usc, is how the administration basically shut down dissent on that campus. At least public dissent. There was such fear that there would be retaliation.

[Margo Gray]

Foreign Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast. This episode was written and reported by Ian Mondt. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont Eliot Adler and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprunkiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel and Andy Jaskowicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss Berman, J.D. crowley, Leah Rees, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hilary Schuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman and Hilary Van Ornam. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davy Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to [e-mail].