(From the latimes.com) Sheriff’s officials are calling it “scannergate,” a scandal at the L.A. County Jail brought to light by an inmate’s suicide. A group of L.A. County sheriff’s deputies used fake scanner codes to avoid making their appointed rounds at the Men’s Central Jail to check on inmate welfare and security, according to an investigation made public Wednesday.

To insure that regular checks occur, the department installed electronic checkpoints with bar codes around the jail that deputies must scan with a reader on their rounds.? But the county Office of Independent Review reported that investigators found some deputies had copies of the codes on sheets of paper. Instead of doing the rounds, the deputies scanned the codes at their desks.

The scanner scam was uncovered after an inmate committed suicide in his cell in March 2009. The follow-up investigation of the suicide revealed that the inmate had been dead for hours before his body was found. But records showed that a deputy went by his cell during the time the inmate was dead. Investigators grew suspicious when they discovered that computer records showed the deputy scanned several parts of the jail in 35 seconds — a physical impossibility.

Read more here: L.A. County sheriff’s deputies thwarted bar code system to avoid doing jail rounds