Serious misconduct alleged in report former UCLA professors sought to block. They moved on with no discipline.

Revelations that three UCLA orthodontics professors solicited unauthorized fees from international students sent shock waves through the university’s highly regarded dentistry school in 2020.

An independent investigation commissioned by UCLA — including scores of interviews, reviews of over 300,000 emails, and 79,000 other documents and financial records — concluded that the influential faculty members had engaged in serious misconduct, leading them to leave their prestigious positions.

But until recently, the full report has been suppressed, and it paints a far more troubling picture of alleged improper governmental activities, including allegations of fraud, extortion, violations of conflict of interest laws and misappropriation of public money.

The three professors waged a legal battle against The Times for more than two years to muzzle the report by the Hueston Hennigan law firm. However, in June, an appeals court ruled that the Hueston investigation was extensive and that UCLA must release the report, with redactions, emphasizing its public interest and reliability.

In its opinion, the appeals court upheld a trial judge’s prior order to release the report, after The Times and a whistleblower filed public records requests.

“Plaintiffs make no effort to show that the misconduct alleged was not of a substantial nature,” the court wrote. “And it is plain from the record before us that there were ‘sufficient indicia of reliability’ to support a reasonable conclusion the whistleblower complaint and the Hueston report were well founded.”

Despite the report’s findings, the university offered settlements to each of the three professors, allowing them to resign with no finding of misconduct and without formal disciplinary proceedings. Some allegations in the investigation were not substantiated, the report said.

The three professors involved are Kang Eric Ting, former chair of the orthodontics section of the dentistry school; Won Moon, former program director of the International Residency Program and the Advanced Clinical Training program; and Jin Hee Kwak, a former junior faculty member.

In a statement to The Times, Ting claimed that the investigation was initiated as retaliation for reporting a “scientific malfeasance among [his] colleagues.” He called the report, “a document filled with unproven claims that me and my colleagues were never given a proper chance to fully review, rebuke and disprove.”

Two people walk up stairs at UCLA in Westwood last summer.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

(The Hueston investigation found that Ting had allegedly harassed another professor during her tenure process, including making the academic misconduct allegations. This section of the report has been partially redacted.)

In an email, Moon said that the report contained “baseless accusations against me and the unfair investigation” and accused the Hueston Hennigan law firm of serving as a “shield and a sword for UCLA.”

Kwak did not return calls seeking comment.

The report found that two international students were convinced to pay $30,000 a year — $120,000 total — into a UCLA Foundation fund, created by Ting and Kwak in collaboration with the UCLA development office, the report said. University development officials were led to believe that the fund was created in anticipation of a gift to support research training, but the investigation found no evidence that the money in the donation fund supported either student’s research expenses.

Regular tuition for international students in the Orthodontics Clinic ranges from $57,000 to $70,000.

Payments deposited into the fund — named the “Orthodontic International Training Program for Research Education Fund” — were used for various expenses, including a lab freezer, computer hard drives, and a $26,000 transfer to an account “controlled” by Ting’s spouse, a plastic surgery professor at UCLA, the report said.

When asked, a spokesman for Ting did not provide a reason for the transfer to his spouse’s account, stating that “no faculty member or researcher at the university had access to the Orthodontic International Training Program for Research Education Fund for any personal use.”

An internal document by UCLA’s Audit and Advisory Service reviewed by The Times indicated that Ting and his spouse “reportedly collaborate[d] on various research endeavors.” The document stated, “expenditures charged to the fund by this unit likewise fell into the categories of vivarium [animal] charges and scientific supplies.”

In a statement to The Times, Ting’s wife defended her husband and his work in the orthodontics clinic. She did not address questions about how funds under her control were spent.

The report found that the dentistry school’s implementation of a profit-sharing program that allows some health science faculty to receive additional compensation violated university policy because it was funded by student fees, rather than the clinic’s income from professional services. Ting and Moon were found to have engaged in improper governmental activities, including conflict of interest, by making decisions “that directly impacted the payments each faculty member would receive,” the report said.

A Bruin statue at UCLA.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Ting allegedly used his position as orthodontics chair to lower section expenses, including seeking to cut pay for part-time instructors in the clinic, to preserve faculty profit-sharing payments, according to the report.

After the findings were presented to UCLA, Moon and Kwak were sent letters of intent to dismiss. Ting, a tenured faculty member, was placed on involuntary leave pending formal charges.

Each of the professors later entered into settlement agreements with the university, allowing two months of paid leave, voluntary resignations, and no findings of misconduct. The agreements also prevented the professors from seeking employment in the UC system.

“Upholding UCLA’s values of transparency, integrity, and accountability, we engaged an external firm to investigate a complaint of potential misconduct,” Dean Paul Krebsbach said in a comment to The Times. “After receiving the report, the School of Dentistry took corrective action to ensure improved adherence to university policies, including the implementation of tighter protocols related to financial reporting.”

In a statement, Ting said that he accepted the settlement agreement because “after years of trying to be an educator in a hostile work environment that was starting to negatively impact my health, [I] acquiesced to the pressure.”

Moon told The Times that he accepted the settlement because he believed it “was better, for everyone’s sake, to move on.” “I did not want to drag my students into my battle with UCLA, nor did I want to engage in lengthy and expensive litigation with UCLA,” he said.

The report details a complicated set of transactions demanded of the students, with implications that not complying would affect their studies.

After admission into the highly selective international residency program in 2014, one student was approached by an orthodontics staffer requesting what was described as an obligatory “donation” of $30,000 a year, the report said.

The staffer told investigators that Ting and Moon instructed them to approach the Middle Eastern student on the assumption that “his government sponsor could — and would — pay for [the fee].” The student, not named in the report, was previously enrolled in another international student program and was sponsored by a governmental nonprofit.

As chair of the section and director of international programs, Ting and Moon directly impacted international student recruitment, admissions decisions, and mentorship. Kwak also had ready access to students, having taught courses in the program.

The professors were active in training students, writing and giving exams, and designing program curricula. The Times reviewed emails — obtained through public records requests — between Ting and Moon and international students which show that the professors were often approached to be professional evaluators, recommenders, and mentors to aspiring international orthodontists.

Feeling “very scared,” the Hueston report said, the student relayed the “donation” request to officials at the governmental nonprofit sponsoring his education. According to email exchanges cited in the report, the nonprofit questioned Moon on the origin and purpose of the “donation,” which had not previously been disclosed in the student’s letter of acceptance.

According to the report, the additional $30,000 “fee” was then presented as a “cost… to equip international students with basic and advanced research skills,” accompanied by invoices and letters with the School of Dentistry letterhead. The investigation found that the alleged promised research skills went beyond the scope of the international resident program and had not been approved by the university.

The report refers to an invoice for $30,000 that the Hamad Medical Corporation, a public healthcare provider in Qatar, paid to the Orthodontic Research Foundation for Trainees.

Emails show that if payments for the student were not received by a certain date, orthodontics faculty and staff threatened to suspend his activities. “Either they pay or [the student] is taking time off until we get paid,” Moon said in an email exchange with an orthodontics staffer, according to the report.

The professors later claimed that the student requested additional training. Despite working in Ting’s lab during his residency, the student told investigators he received no enhanced or special research training.

In a statement to The Times, Ting said that the student’s thesis was “the culmination of the advanced training.”

The Hamad Medical Corporation subsequently paid a total of $90,000 in “fees” for the student’s three-year residency program.

The payments were purported to the student as program fees and to the university as donations, constituting fraud and extortion under California law, the report concluded.

Previously, The Times reported that certain orthodontics residents were required to pay extra fees and that the professors received incentive and bonus compensation based on the payments. The report clarifies that the extra “fees” paid by the international students were deposited into the gift fund and not included in the monies delegated for the profit-sharing arrangement.

By having the student pay directly into a gift fund, the professors were able to bypass fees typically taken out of tuition by the university, including a 40% “Dean’s Tax,” the report said.

Shortly after the first incident, a second student, also unnamed in the report, was notified of her acceptance into the “Combo-Track” program, a combination research and clinical training program. The student, already enrolled in an orthodontics program at UCLA, would be required, the report said, to pay an additional $30,000 with the promise, from Moon, of becoming more competitive for an orthodontics residency.

According to the report, the orthodontics section did not seek approval or receive authorization from the university for the “Combo-Track” program or the additional fees associated with it.

The student, previously rejected from UCLA’s international residency program, decided to join the Combo-Track program and made multiple payments into the gift fund totaling the required $30,000.

To make payments, the student took out a loan with her bank, which required proof that the payment was for tuition needs. Knowing that the student could not obtain a loan without that proof, Moon insisted that the “term ‘donation’ should not be used,” and a letter to the student was amended to state that the $30,000 fee was a tuition cost.

While these payments were being made, the UCLA development office sent the student “thank you” notes for her “generous gift.”

The report said that when the student was slow to make her payments, both Moon and Kwak “admonished” that her research participation would be suspended.

A spokesman for UCLA said that after the Hueston Hennigan report, “both parties were refunded the entirety of their payments ($30,000 and $90,000 respectively).”

The university said it has implemented a number of recommendations, including allocating dedicated staff and faculty resources — including a newly created director of postgraduate programs — to oversee the tracking of postgraduate fees and transactions.

Since they departed from the university, the three professors have continued to work in academic positions with significant access to and influence on students.

Kwak started a private practice and is a part-time professor at USC. Moon holds professor and adjunct professor positions at Ajou University School of Medicine and Kyung Hee University, both in South Korea, and The Forsyth Institute in Boston.

Ting is an adjunct professor at The Forsyth Institute and the executive director and a founding committee member of the International Orthodontics Foundation. His website says he has mentored more than 39 master of science students, seven PhD students and more than 16 postdoctoral fellows.