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On January 27, 1994, one of the largest workers’ compensation fraud rings in Los Angeles history was cracked with the arrest of Robert Ball, a Beverly Hills attorney, and eight of his associates.
The very inventive scam this group ran consisted of contacting laid-off workers by telephone and convincing them that they were entitled to benefits from their former employers. Telemarketers, working from lists of laid-off workers or from the phone book, would place calls and claim to be working for the “California Employment Protection Agency,” a fictitious company with a name specifically chosen to convey the impression that it was a government agency. Once a laid-off worker was recruited, he would be referred to several medical specialists, each of whom would bill the former employer’s insurance carrier for thousands of dollars of unnecessary treatment. It is estimated that more than 35,000 individuals were recruited as claimants, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of fraudulent insurance claims.
Arrested with Ball were two chiropractors, Arthur L. Carlisle and Charles M. Valyan; a psychologist, George P. Rowell; and several clerical and collections workers.
The investigation began in early 1992 when the California Department of Insurance began to receive complaints about unsolicited calls. Acting on information developed from these leads, the Department of Insurance and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office were able to obtain secret Grand Jury indictments of ten people.
Currently, according to Irene Wakabayashi, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney, the case is in the pre-trial phase with the next scheduled court date set for October 14, 1994. The ten defendants, who have been charged with varying counts ranging from conspiracy to commit insurance fraud to referrals with reckless disregard, are all either out on bail or have been released on their own recognizance.
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