Insurance Fraud

Some folks celebrate their last home mortgage payment by setting fire to their loan agreement. Lately, some people behind on their mortgages are simply setting fire to their homes. In what appears to be the latest symptom of the nation's mortgage meltdown and credit crisis, insurers, law enforcement officials and state agencies nationwide report a jump in home and automobile fires in the last year believed to have been set by owners unable to pay their debts.

The deliberations got loud at one point, and a couple of holdouts delayed the final two verdicts. But in the end, jurors plowed relatively quickly through a mountain of circumstantial evidence to convict a pair of elderly women in the life insurance murders of two homeless men. On Monday, jurors found Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the 1999 killing of Paul Vados.

Sellers of wheelchairs, drugs and other medical supplies collected as much as $93 million in fraudulent Medicare claims based on prescriptions from doctors who were dead, some for more than 10 years, a congressional investigation has found. Millions more dollars will be at risk of waste and fraud each year in the billion-dollar government-run health program for the elderly and disabled unless Medicare officials address flaws in procedures, the investigation said. The bipartisan report by the Senate Homeland Security investigations subcommittee, obtained by the Associated Press, reviewed millions of reimbursement claims for medical equipment and supplies from 2000 through 2007.

For a decade, California employers and their advocates in Sacramento complained about the high cost of workers' compensation insurance and condemned abuses of the system by employees, who they said fake claims, exaggerate medical conditions and collect fat disability benefits. But some data suggest that employers -- not workers -- are the bigger workers' compensation cheaters. And the state is stepping up enforcement against businesses suspected of ignoring the law and endangering workers.

The FBI arrested two people for defrauding a grieving mother of $200,000 in life insurance money she was awarded after her son died in a Marine Corps training accident, agents announced Tuesday. Raymond Brogan, 41, and Carol Damico, 33, were apprehended without incident for pilfering the insurance money and using it to purchase furniture and flat-screen TVs and to bolster their bank account.

A former Los Angeles County probation department clerk who fled the country earlier this year after she was charged with bigamy and insurance fraud was captured in Mexico over the weekend, authorities said Monday. Damaris Ninet Amesquita, 30, was found Saturday by a bail bonds agent in Mexicali, said Los Angeles County district attorney's spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Wednesday that a sting operation by his office had turned up an auto insurance scam resulting in criminal charges against 101 defendants.

Nine doctors, six healthcare administrators and three associates were indicted Wednesday in a scam in which doughnuts, candy and other gifts were used to lure elderly and mentally ill patients into more than $12 million worth of unnecessary respiratory treatments that were fraudulently billed to Medicare, federal officials said. The alleged insurance scheme is outlined in two separate indictments handed up by a federal grand jury in Santa Ana.

Two Marines were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of arson and insurance fraud for burning a car to help a fellow Marine collect insurance money, authorities said. Benjamin Faler, 26, of Lake Elsinore and Theodore Arvanitis, 28, of Twentynine Palms drove a 2006 Nissan Altima to a remote area, then set it on fire, destroying it, said Gary Smith, a senior investigator with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday that two women accused of killing transient men to collect life insurance money will stand trial on murder and conspiracy charges. Helen Golay, 76, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 74, are accused of taking out multiple life insurance policies on Paul Vados, 73, and Kenneth McDavid, 50, and then killing both men by hitting them with a car. The two women pleaded not guilty at a September arraignment.