A claimant jailed for fraud is preparing to crank up his legal barbeque and cook the district attorney and the company that got him locked up. Stephen Oneto’s work comp claim was opened in 1997 when he injured his back working for Foster Farms in Auburn. His injury was severe enough that steel bars were... Read More
The Los Angeles and Sacramento District Attorneys’ offices have two new fraud trophies to hang on their walls. Ana Rosa Pena managed to slip an anxiety claim through on adjusters July 1, 1998 after her employer, Los Angeles County, received a bomb threat. But while on disability she went beyond just buying a bottle of... Read More
A man who claimed he spent most of last December in bed whimpering because of a mysterious unwitnessed back injury was arrested Dec. 19 because 33 hours of sub rosa video footage told a different story. Between December 2001 and February 2002 the Workers’ Compensation Department of the Fresno Unified School District obtained footage of... Read More
In 1999 Shah Kazemi, the CEO of Monterey Mushroom—the largest mushroom distributor in the United States with more than 4,500 employees and four farms in California—noticed that one chiropractor’s business was flourishing from his farm’s rich compost of claims. Kazemi reported his observations to authorities, which then moved in and unearthed some dirty claims. Working... Read More
An ex-State Compensation Insurance Fund (State Fund) employee has been recognized for his interpreting business success that translated over 600,000 fraudulent dollars into his pocket book. For his hard work, Rodolpho Gaona received the Los Angeles county jail holiday package that will now cost him $500,000 to check out of. Gaona, also known as Norberto... Read More
As the lights go out on California’s energy crisis, they seem to now be beaming brightly on a whole new array of fiscal predicaments, which includes the State’s workers’ compensation system. Hitting on one aspect of why workers’ compensation costs are through the roof, Peter Gorman, vice president at Alliance of American Insurers, told the... Read More
A greedy claims examiner will soon trade in her business casual wardrobe for a State issued orange jumpsuit. For her second time in six months, Elisa Guillermo was arrested Dec. 5 on charges that she issued payments to phony physical therapy providers. All things considered, the million plus dollars Guillermo funned out of her two... Read More
The state recently called a woman on her bluff after she attempted to enhance her monthly financial fetch from her welfare checks with a work comp check. San Bernardino resident, 37-year-old Emilia Sanchez was faced with the decision of getting a job and losing her welfare benefits or staying unemployed to keep the checks rolling... Read More
