Insurance Fraud

When a security firm contracting with Los Angeles County went bankrupt earlier this year, hundreds of workers were not paid for their hours guarding county clinics, Sheriff's Department buildings and Fire Department facilities. On Tuesday, Supervisor Gloria Molina urged county lawyers to find a way to pay them about $200,000 in wages she said they are due, prompting a bitter exchange among her colleagues. International Services Inc., which placed nearly 800 guards in county facilities, filed for bankruptcy after its president and chief executive, Ousama "Sam" Karawia, 45, was charged with multiple counts of conspiracy, grand theft, making false statements and insurance fraud.

Six people have been charged with participating in an auto insurance fraud ring that scammed companies out of nearly $1 million, authorities said Thursday. The ring was busted after a California Highway Patrol officer deciphered a numerical code in a ledger seized from a Sherman Oaks attorney's office, authorities said. That attorney, Hamid Taghizadeh, 46, was the suspected ringleader of the operation, according to authorities. Taghizadeh allegedly paid people to bring him potential litigants to sue auto insurance companies -- an illegal practice known as "capping," said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist.

Motorists unable to afford payments on pricey cars and gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles in this recession are turning to a time-tested financing solution: matches. Insurance cheats are torching their vehicles in remote deserts. They're pushing them off cliffs. They're sinking them in lakes or ditching them in Mexico in the hopes of getting their policies to pay off, fraud investigators say. Nationwide, suspicious vehicle fires or arson increased 27% in the first quarter of this year compared with a year earlier, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, an industry-supported agency that investigates all types of insurance fraud.

An Orange County woman was sentenced to eight years in prison Tuesday for recruiting people for unnecessary surgeries as part of a multi-state, $154-million medical insurance fraud scheme. Lilia Toscano, 41, pleaded guilty to 98 counts that included conspiracy, grand theft, tax evasion, insurance fraud and so-called capping, or recruiting patients for a fee, the Orange County district attorney's office said. Toscano enlisted more than 245 people, most of them from California, to take part in the bogus surgeries in exchange for money or low-cost cosmetic surgeries.

Federal officials are expected to announce in Los Angeles today a nationwide effort to combat fraudulent Medicare billing by medical equipment suppliers in 70 urban areas. Such fraud in the federal healthcare program for the elderly has increased in recent years, particularly in the sprawling urban areas of Southern California and south Florida where many of the most vulnerable Medicare recipients live.

With medical costs rising, record numbers of people losing their coverage and healthcare at the top of the domestic agenda, health insurers found themselves Wednesday in the cross-hairs of regulators, elected officials and law enforcement in California and across the nation. New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo said the nation's largest health insurers have rigged rates they pay for physician visits, leaving patients with higher medical bills. In Los Angeles, City Atty.

They plucked the destitute off the street as "investments," insured their lives for millions, then snuffed them out in staged hit-and-run accidents. They became so consumed by greed that they bickered over the money even after their arrests. At least that's how prosecutors Tuesday outlined their case against Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

A former car salesman testified Thursday that he sold a Mercury Sable station wagon to one of two elderly women accused of using the vehicle to kill a homeless man in a murder-for-life-insurance scheme. Mario Medina is the first eyewitness to tie Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, to the car that prosecutors say was the murder weapon in the death of Kenneth McDavid, 50, in an alley in West Los Angeles in 2005.

It wasn't the typical murder weapon viewing. Jurors had to squat, kneel and even lie on their stomachs to get a good look at the instrument that two septuagenarian women allegedly used to kill a homeless man to collect his life insurance. Prosecutors say the 1999 Mercury Sable station wagon killed Kenneth McDavid. It was taken to the basement of the courthouse Friday as part of their weeklong attempt to tie the vehicle to Helen Golay, 77, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75.

Life insurance agent Jody Resmick received a baffling call from an irate customer. "I want to report a fraud. I'm the fiancee; she's not the fiancee," said the woman, identifying herself only as Olga, Resmick recalled recently outside court. Speaking in a heavy accent, Olga began "ranting and ranting like a lunatic" that Helen Golay had committed fraud by listing herself as the beneficiary on a policy for a down-and-out man who had been killed in a hit-and-run accident.