Pinellas Child Welfare Investigator Arrested For Faking Reports

LARGO, FL – A child protective investigator who was supposed to look out for the welfare of endangered children never even bothered to meet some of the kids.

That’s what investigators discovered when they began looking into Steven Urban’s work history, said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. Over the past year, he said Urban fabricated records for 75 of the 142 child welfare cases he handled as an employee of the sheriff’s child protection unit.

Gualtieri said his office is still evaluating cases Urban handled the previous five years he worked for the sheriff’s office.

The 29-year-old Largo resident was arrested Thursday, March 8, and charged with 10 counts of falsifying records.

“Frankly, this guy needs the harshest of consequences,” Gualtieri said. “He needs to go to prison. He put these kids in harm’s way. He failed them.”

Pinellas is one of six counties in Florida in which the sheriff’s office, rather than the Florida Department of Children and Families, handles child welfare investigations into allegations of abusing, endangering and abandoning children.

Up until now, said Gualtieri, the system has worked fine for more than 15 years. He said his office receives 11,000 child protection calls a year. The unit employs 140 people, 80 of which work on the streets as child welfare investigators.

“We thought we had all the checks and balances in place,” he said.

That all changed in January when an investigator began checking into allegations that a child was in danger due to domestic violence in the home. During her investigation, she learned there had been another child endangerment complaint filed in November against the same parents.

Urban had investigated that complaint and the case file included interviews with family members and counselors, family assessments based on home visits and a plan to ensure the child’s safety if he remains in the home.

“It was all concocted. It was all lies,” Gualtieri said.

Urban detailed one interview he’d done with the child’s grandmother in November. However, the grandmother died in 2014.

He wrote up another interview with a school counselor who swore to the sheriff’s office that she never met or spoke with Urban.

When the sheriff’s office confronted Urban in January about the discrepancies, he denied that his reports were falsified. Nevertheless, he resigned from his $47,000-a-year job on Jan. 18.

Concerned that this might not be the only child welfare case that contained falsified documents, the sheriff’s office began reviewing the 142 child protection investigations Urban handled from January 2017 until he quit his job on Jan. 18.

“We determined that 75 cases, or 52 percent, had been falsified,” Gualtieri said.

In 29 cases, Urban had done no investigation at all, he said.

“He sat home on his couch and made it all up,” Gualtieri said. “He made up stories, witness interviews and totally concocted these false narratives.”

And, in 44 of the 75 cases, Gualtieri said "he committed the most egregious act that somebody in his position could commit. He verified the well-being of children he never even saw.”

Investigators also found two instances in which children should have been removed from the home, but weren't.

Gualtieri said Urban was very convincing. To ensure each child welfare case is thoroughly investigated, the investigator is required to present regular briefings to his supervisor, he noted. Urban managed to breeze through all of his briefings using his gift for elaborate, detailed stories he made up, he said.

“Think about the concerted efforts he made to come up with these fake safety plans and sworn interviews,” Gualtieri said. “A lot of thought had to go into that. He probably spent more time making stuff up than if he’d just done his job.”

Gualtieri said he is not holding any supervisors accountable for Urban’s deception.

“The supervisors did their jobs,” he said. “There was no way they would have known. He provided sworn statements and false reports.”

He also said Urban’s actions shouldn’t reflect on his department’s other investigators “who have committed their professional lives to making sure kids are safe.”

“This cheater, this scammer is an affront to all of them, but he’s an anomaly,” Gualtieri said. “He’s not representative of the work being done by our child protection investigators. He’s a bad apple.”

Nevertheless, Gualtieri has implemented a new policy to ensure this never happens again. Each week, the supervisors will pull five random cases and follow up on them to make sure the investigator visited the home and interviewed all parties.

“It’s imperative we do everything we can to make sure this never happens again,” he said. “We need to do everything possible to make sure the children are safe.”

During his arrest Thursday, Urban refused to answer any questions and asked for an attorney. As sheriff’s deputies led him to a waiting sheriff’s cruiser for the trip to the Pinellas County Jail, he remained tight-lipped despite a barrage of questions from the news media.

“What motivated him to do it? I don’t know,” Gualtieri said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Prior to being hired by the sheriff’s child protection unit, Urban had no civil service experience. Child protection investigators are not required to have experience although they must have a bachelor’s degree.

Once hired, they receive both class and field training and must complete the Florida Child Protective Investigation certification within 12 months of being hired, according to the DCF annual report.