SONOMA COUNTY – This week, Sonoma State University came under new scrutiny when federal and Sonoma County officials served a search warrant at the university's administrative offices.

Sonoma County District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua said that on Thursday investigators from U. S. Department of Health and Human Services/Office of the Inspector General, Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation served the search warrant in conjunction with a joint investigation into allegations of the misuse of federal grant monies.

“We are working closely with local state and federal authorities to determine whether there was misappropriation of federal funds,” Passalacqua said in a written statement.

Passalacqua reported that the case was initiated based on a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services resulting from an internal Sonoma State University audit of California Institute on Human Services (CIHS).

CIHS, created in 1979, was a department at Sonoma State University and was in charge of obtaining federal and state grants at Sonoma State University.

The case remains under investigation by a joint federal and state task force of investigators as they continue to analyze the voluminous amounts of documents associated with the alleged misappropriation of as many as 20 separate state and federal grant funding sources administered by Sonoma State.

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