The University of Southern California ordered Sarah Warren and her family to turn over their devices and have them wiped clean of anything showing an ex-medical school dean doing drugs as part of an 'unseemly' $1.5 million settlement.
The family had threatened to sue the college over Carmen Puliafito's relationship with Warren, who met the scholar as a prostitute in 2015.
Warren was part of a 'circle of other young addicts and criminals' that Puliafito did drugs with, sometimes even on campus, according to photos shared in a bombshell Los Angeles Times report from 2017.
Puliafito resigned from his $1.1-million-a-year job in March 2016 after Warren overdosed in a hotel room with him in Pasadena three weeks earlier. At the time, he told police she was a family friend.
The ex-dean later avoided criminal charges for allegedly giving Warren's minor brother Charles drugs due to lack of evidence.
The $1.5 million settlement was finalized in January or February 2018, but the extraordinarily strict terms of the agreement could be in violation of California law, which makes it a misdemeanor to destroy or conceal material to prevent it from being used 'in evidence upon a trial, inquiry, or investigation, authorized by law.'
It's unknown if USC kept copies of the deleted material, but if it didn't, it could risk inviting more legal scrutiny, LA Times reporter Paul Pringle revealed Thursday.
USC declined to answer questions from DailyMail.com.
The university's current president Carol Fold declined to comment, with a spokeswoman telling the LA Times that the events happened 'years' before she got there. The college's attorney at the time also declined to speak to the newspaper.
The settlement prevented the family from speaking about it. Former LA County prosecutor Alan Jackson called the USC settlement 'unseemly.'
'You’re basically taking the evidence away from the victims,' Jackson said.
An attorney for current USC President C.L. Max Nikias told the newspaper that Nikias knew nothing about the deletions.
'He has not seen USC's settlement agreement with the Warren family nor does he have any knowledge regarding its specific contents,' the attorney, Stacy Harrison, said.
Carmen A. Puliafito (seen in 2014) resigned from his $1.1-million-a-year job in March 2016 after Sarah Warren overdosed in a
