A Triathlete’s legal challenge that started back in June is on its last leg now that she’s pled guilty to one count of workers’ compensation insurance fraud. And for her chiropractor, it looks like he’s going to be breaking a pretty good sweat as well before it’s is all through. Charlotte Chapman accepted a previously... Read More
Above The Law, But Not Liability. City Of Oakland.
The City of Oakland seems to have started off 2003 on the wrong foot. First, visions of glory and bragging rights to being the home of the current Superbowl champs were crushed by Tampa Bay. Then just this month the public learned that another team in the city, the Oakland Riders, posted a record liability... Read More
Claimant Not Happy He Was Forced To Do The Chicken Dance
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
