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Ghost broker arrested for selling fake workers’ compensation policies

Jorge Alexandria | October 1, 2025

All seemed to be going well for 54-year-old Fernando Jose Cuellar Membrano as an insurance agent. Why wouldn’t it? After all he had defied long odds before, emigrating from a life of poverty in El Salvador to studying business management at a trade school in California and then moving to the peach state, Georgia. He wore a suit and was well-groomed, blending in as a licensed insurance agent as he prepared certificates of insurance for workers’ compensation insurance clients.

But at some point, the Georgia State Board of Workers’ Compensation Enforcement Division said Membrano slipped up. Exactly how, they won’t say. However, multiple complaints were lodged against him since March 2020 and kept coming in. Additionally, the Georgia Office of Insurance Commissioner’s license verification site shows he was not a licensed producer.

In August 2025 he was arrested and charged with posing as an insurance agent and selling phony workers’ compensation policies. All in all, the Gwinnett County grand jury indicted him on 22 counts of insurance fraud.

The investigation showed that Membrano had stolen thousands of dollars from business owners, particularly in the construction trade, who thought they had purchased workers’ compensation insurance. Enforcement Division Director Tammy Marshall said Membrano converted premium payments for personal use, leaving business owners uninsured... Read More

Attorney Matthew Rifat gets seriously disciplined by the California State Bar Court judge, but he does not get disbarred. His trial character witnesses gave stellar reports of his moral character.

Lonce Lamonte | September 26, 2025

Matthew Rifat was disciplined by the California State Bar Court judge.

After six years of prodigious litigation occurring as a consequence of being indicted by the Riverside County District... Read More

Rebecca Juarez and Juan Pablo Rodriguez, from Irvine, charged with conspiracy, medical insurance claims fraud, and identity theft.

Lonce Lamonte | September 22nd, 2025

Rebecca Juarez and Juan Pablo Rodriguez, both of Irvine, California, have been arrested and arraigned of late for medical insurance claims fraud. On September 16, 2025, both Rebecca Juarez and Juan Rodriguez were arraigned on a criminal complaint filed in Orange County Superior Court. They are charged with two counts of conspiracy, 21 counts of... Read More

Matthew Rifat’s final argument, final brief, finally comes to a close in his California Bar Trial. He had twenty pages worth to say.

Lonce Lamonte | September 11th, 2025

The biggest problem attorney Matthew Rifat got into was doing too much work for Dr. Munir Uwaydah. He worked as a contract lawyer, the Law Offices of Matthew D. Rifat, and he worked as a contract bookkeeping service called Parkside Solutions. He started all this work back at the end of the Frontline Medical days,... Read More

Matthew Rifat expresses in final brief he felt confident and reassured because of an “absence of any indictment” from the Los Angeles case

Lonce Lamonte | August 26th, 2025

Matthew Rifat, as his own attorney, wrote in the final brief for the California Bar trial, that Matthew the client studied numerous motions. These motions were filed in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s 2015 Indictment cases charging the “Criminal Organization Munir Uwaydah”. So, he studied them. Matthew asserted these motions showed fatal weaknesses in the... Read More

Matthew Rifat confronted Vic Beyer, a SIU investigator from Insurance Company of the West, who stopped off at Firstline Health to see about Dr. David Johnson who was billing for patients while he was in jail.

Lonce Lamonte | August 22nd, 2025

Here’s continuing with Matthew Rifat’s final closing argument brief. It’s long. He’s representing himself here in his case with the State Bar of California. He’s defending himself in pro per. Having gone through over three million dollars of his own money related to his own defense, by paying his lawyers plus court and filing expenses,... Read More

The Department of Justice won’t prosecute Liberty Mutual for bribery as a result of the insurer’s complete cooperation

Lonce Lamonte | August 13th, 2025

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company will pay 4.7 million dollars in a bribery settlement. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) found evidence of bribery by employees in one of its subsidiaries. The DOJ’s investigation into an India-based subsidiary, Liberty General Insurance (LGI) found that over a five-year period, from 2017 to 2022, employers paid 1.47 million... Read More

Attorney Matthew Rifat described the Los Angeles DA’s aggravated mayhem charge as only applying to Tatiana Arnold and not mentioning Dr. Uwaydah’s physician assistant Peter Nelson

Lonce Lamonte | August 12th, 2025

Matthew Rifat further argued in his closing brief in his California Bar Trial that Dr. Robin Chorn owned Blue Oak Medical Group twice. He owned the practice once during 2015 and through the end of that year; and then once again in 2017. Matthew got the specific dates wrong in his closing brief, but during... Read More