A former Indiana Department of Child Services caseworker faces felony charges after investigators say she documented visits with kids that never actually took place.
Sylvia Mbilo Mundala, 47, faces one charge of official misconduct and one charge of falsifying child abuse records.
Mundala, who worked for DCS between February 2021 and August 2024, was tasked with checking up on children who had been removed from their families and placed elsewhere, including in foster homes. The Indiana inspector general’s office began investigating Mundala after her supervisor grew suspicious that she wasn’t making all of the visits that she recorded in the agency’s database.
Mundala’s most recent criminal charges stem from interactions — or lack thereof — with three families during summer 2024.
Mundala’s notes said she’d met with a child and her two guardians at their home at 5 p.m. on July 15, 2024. Mundala included a photo of the child purportedly taken during that meeting, but investigators found that it had been copy and pasted from their initial meeting in May of that year.
A photograph taken by the child’s guardian showed that the girl had a “distinctly different” braided hairstyle on July 15, 2024, than the one pictured, and cellphone location data showed that one of the guardians was an hour away from home at the time of the purported meeting.
An entry for a different family’s file said that Mundala met with a child and guardian at 5 p.m. on July 18, 2024. The guardian said that while there was a meeting scheduled for that day, Mundala did not show up. The guardian never saw Mundala again, she told investigators.
In a third entry, Mundala said that she’d met with a child and guardians at 5:30 p.m. July 25, 2024. One of the child’s guardians said Mundala canceled the meeting at the last minute. She showed investigators a text message she received from Mundala at 5:22 p.m. that day.
“I am not going to be able to make it today,” the message read in part.
Mundala’s employment with DCS ended on Aug. 2, 2024 — three days after at least two of the allegedly falsified visits were entered into the agency’s database.
Court documents do not specify the circumstances under which she left DCS. Kirollos Barsoum, a spokesperson for the Indiana State Personnel Department, said that Mundala resigned.
In an email, DCS head of communications Ron Green wrote that “it would not be appropriate for the agency to comment” on Mundala’s arrest on allegations of falsifying child abuse records.
Mundala’s defense attorney declined to comment.
In 2013, Mundala was charged with felony identity deception in Marion County, according to a criminal history document filed in the new case. The case was later dismissed, and charging documents have since been destroyed in accordance with the state court system’s records retention rules.
All state hires are subject to background checks, and DCS has additional procedures “that are specific to their hiring processes,” wrote Barsoum, the state personnel department spokesperson.
In October 2025, DCS’s annual staffing and caseload report showed that as the number of child welfare cases grew, the number of caseworkers fell. At the time of the report’s publication, the agency needed to hire 201 more case managers to meet the standards set out by state law.
Earlier this month, DCS announced that it had eliminated 75 jobs as part of an ongoing strategic plan, though no front-line case workers were laid off.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
Ryan Murphy is the communities reporter for IndyStar. She can be reached at rhmurphy@indystar.com.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Court docs: Former Indiana DCS caseworker falsified visit records
Reporting by Ryan Murphy, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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