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By Jay Langford
Auto accidents are the house specialty in many Vietnamese American law offices. Most insurance companies with auto policies have claims experience with this specialty. Some of these accidents are real, some are suspect and some are blatantly phony. Most involve multiple occupants, with three or four being considered best. There is the usual mixture of minor impact accidents, staged accidents and paper accidents. Uninsured motorists claims involving late-night, hit-and-run accidents are always popular.
Alleged injuries often defy common sense; treatment seems unnecessary; obscene medical bills are of the cookie-cutter type and many are pure pulp fiction. (Some of us wish these reports were on softer paper.) Demand letters float in from the twilight zone. This scenario is all too familiar. Fraud investigators recognize the game; they know the drill. Claim managers understand the game. These claims are like a homecoming game. With a decent game plan, the good guys will probably win – but they might need to tighten up their defense.
NATIONWIDE – WITH TENTACLES IN CANADA
Some people call these California-style cases. Little Saigon (in Westminster, California) might be the motherland, but the blight has spread throughout the country. Essentially the same game takes place with some of the same players in Los Angeles County, San Diego, San Jose, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Fresno, Phoenix, New Mexico, Texas, New Orleans, the Washington DC metropolitan area and New England. The Canadian edition of the Little Saigon News provides a multitude of ads in and around Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The legal systems differ as the jurisdiction changes, but the players know to adjust the game to fit the local rules. Those rules basically consist of whatever they can get away with. In any event, the auto accident industry is thriving in the Vietnamese communities.
MULTI-SERVICE OFFICES
Multi-service offices are scattered throughout many Vietnamese American communities. Some are called general services; some are known as professional services. Others are simply networks of loosely associated people sharing an office. No matter what the name, no matter what the association, the services are similar. They generally include travel, immigration, insurance, tax, real estate and financial services. Legal services will likely be available as well. Referral services to medical and health care (chiropractic) offices are commonplace. Auto body referral services are easy to obtain.
Services often amount to nothing more than steering someone to the right person with the right license. For example, insurance services might simply involve connecting the client with a licensed agent or broker. Such services are often provided to newcomers with little or no ability to communicate in English. Interpreting can thus be a service as well as a marketing tool.
LEGAL SERVICES
Legal services are a major part of many multi-service offices or networks. Many legal service offices don’t look like law offices. For example, such an office might be hidden in a travel office or a real estate office. Tom Morningstar, a well-known Oregon lawyer and advanced student of the game, refers to these hidden offices as capper stations. A recent laughable example in California consisted of a lawyer’s photograph on the wall of a furniture store, with piles of intake sheets, retainer agreements and various forms neatly stacked on a table. You could buy the lawyer for about the same price as the table. (The table was probably the better buy.)
LAW OFFICES
Many legal service offices are cleverly disguised as law offices. In some states they look like law offices. Most really are law offices with no visible sign of impropriety. In fact, many good lawyers with ethical law practices may be found in Vietnamese American communities. Perhaps the major difference in a Vietnamese American legal service office and a law office is perception. If it looks like a duck… You know the rest.
In parts of Oregon, Washington State and California, a law office in a Vietnamese American community seldom sees a real lawyer. Ditto for parts of Texas.
In many parts of California, if the sign reads Law Office, there is a fairly good chance that you can occasionally find a lawyer inside. For some, it’s the main office; for most it’s a branch office. The lawyer will probably be non-Vietnamese American but the staff will likely be entirely Vietnamese American. The lease, phone, office furniture and office equipment almost invariably belong to the true owner, the manager. Many attorneys don’t even have keys to their branch offices.
It’s a good rule of thumb to consider the staff as management. Similarly, the attorneys can be considered house counsel. They are easily replaceable. They are expendable. The attorneys come, the attorneys go, but house counsel remains intact.
On occasion, the Vietnamese American staff will go outside the ethnic community and also operate in the main office. (That’s usually the office the lawyer had before being suckered into the mess under control of Vietnamese American management.)
MIDDLEMEN
Legal service/law offices in Vietnamese American communities are generally controlled by a non-lawyer middleman. The middleman may be an individual, but it can often be a group or a partnership or a multi-service family enterprise. The middleman concept is gender neutral, with many of the better middlemen being female. The middleman might have a professional license, such as a real estate or insurance broker’s license, but legal services are often the primary income-generating enterprise. In even the most successful real estate office, insurance office or travel office, a viable legal service operation is probably lurking about.
The middleman in a legal service office or law office is likely to be called an administrator, office manager, paralegal or legal assistant. Some claim to be marketing directors or public relations managers. In some parts of the country there may be a claim manager, case director or account executive. Other employee titles include investigator and field representative. No matter what the title is though, the administrator also provides management services.
Some management types wear more than one hat, and some are prolific cappers. Many management types are not cappers, but many of the best office managers have a working relationship with the best field cappers. No matter how high the executive office position, no matter how low the field job, almost everybody has a beeper, and their goals are similar: Hustle up as many real accidents ( or phony accidents) as possible and as many victims as possible and make as much money as possible pushing them through the system. It doesn’t matter that an accident may be phony: the money is still real.
ATTORNEY FEES
Pre-litigation attorney fees are frequently set in the 14 to 18 percent range. These offices can compete, and can often thrive, on a bare-bones basis because virtually no attorney work is involved in generating attorney fees. When a case goes into litigation and more active participation by a lawyer is required, the cut-rate fee goes out the window and a new fee schedule kicks in. Nevertheless, the staff will continue to do most of the work. That’s just as well since the staff or management will probably receive a substantial portion of the attorney fees as well some of the doctor’s fees. Financial arrangements will almost certainly favor management.
LAWYER PROCUREMENT
One of the primary functions of the administrator is to come up with at least one lawyer, or at least one lawyer’s name, to make the operation viable. Lawyers from outside the Vietnamese American communities are generally sought to operate branch offices. These lawyers will most likely be preferred because most of the good Vietnamese American lawyers don’t want anything to do with these sleazy operations. Vietnamese American lawyers run their own offices, provide their own offices, provide their own management, and are far less likely to fall under the control of non-lawyer middlemen.
The lawyer’s ability or skill is of little significance. The license to practice law is the important thing. A key factor for an administrator is to find a lawyer who is essentially controllable. Troubled lawyers are favorite recruiting targets for these branch offices. These lawyers often have alcohol abuse problems or other problems, so they tend to be fairly easy to control. A troubled attorney with little experience and poor lawyering skills is a blessing to management. He’s ready for prime time. He’s ready to be franchised out to other branch offices. He can make his administrator rich.
Another target is a little sadder. That’s the elderly lawyer taking what amounts to a professional twilight cruise. Virtually all of these elderly lawyers are male. Many are seventy-something or eighty-something. Some of these guys were really good in their days, but that was in times past. In some ways they are a little like the star athlete who has tried to hold on too long. One day his game begins to fall apart.
When the lawyer’s game is no longer what it used to be, the availability of management may prolong the career. By the time he falls into the manager’s trap, he may be so frail that the manager has to provide transportation to shuffle him around. In any event, control is usually not a big problem when the alternative is to collect Social Security. Even a claims manager could feel sorry for the poor guy.
Strange as it may seem, some branch office lawyer candidates may only have an Asian fetish. That’s a term I recently found in a Vietnamese magazine describing Americans who prefer Asian women. The female author offered her opinion that some Asian women don’t like being stereotyped as being exotic. – A thousand apologies! Eight years in Asia, and I never knew calling a lady exotic might be a no-no. If this Asian fetish theory is true, the middleman may only have to hire an exotic secretary to maintain control over the branch lawyer.
No matter what the method or motivation, once the lawyer is under control he may be used, abused and possibly franchised out to other branch offices and even other administrators until he is no longer useful. When one lawyer burns out or loses his license, management never cares. A replacement is never far away. It’s always easy to drag in another stooge to be the lawyer. ( Don’t read too much into this. Some of the lawyers may not be stooges.)
DIVERSIFIED BUSINESS INTERESTS
Many middlemen have diversified business interests. Some are big-time players. Once upon a time, not long ago in a fantasyland called Little Saigon, there lived a player who was an insurance broker, a health care provider and a law-office owner. Professional licenses were not his forte. He was purely and simply a money man. He sold an uninsured motorist policy; then after a suspect accident, he steered the insured to his own health care clinic and his own law office. That player could never see any problem because all the money was green. Nevertheless, many claims professionals see red or worse when non-lawyers own law offices. Laymen who own medical or health care offices also draw attention. Questionable ownership of these professional offices gives a fraud investigator cause to pause, cause to dig deeper. The deeper you dig the more shenanigans you are likely to find.
MARKETING AND ADVERTISING
Marketing and advertising take on many forms. What may seem to be capping to the insurance industry, and perhaps to the law in many jurisdictions, may be seen as only marketing by Vietnamese American law office administrators.
The trick is to market the administrator, to highlight the administrator, but also to point out that the office has a lawyer licensed in the appropriate jurisdiction.
The administrator or manager will often claim to be a former lawyer in Vietnam. Many also claim to be former judges in Vietnam. Indeed, if the ads are to be believed, former lawyers and former judges from Vietnam are swarming all over America. No matter what some people may think, the former lawyer/judge routine seems to impress the clients. That’s about all it takes – but for good measure, the administrator sometimes mentions that he was/is also a professor. So much for higher education.
Advertising takes on many forms. Vietnamese business directories emphasize the administrator, legal assistant, paralegal or other staff member. Likewise, daily, weekly and monthly newspapers are inundated with the law office/legal service ads. Many have photos of the staff, and the ads usually provide beeper/pager numbers. In some markets the ads are relatively stabilized. In others, the players change frequently. Usually the change will be the substitution of a new lawyer’s name for the former lawyer’s name. The names change, but the ads remain the same. Friday is generally the best day around the country to pick up new newspapers in the Vietnamese American communities.
International channels in some television markets are heavily sponsored by Vietnamese American law offices/legal services operations. You might not follow the words but you can frequently identify some of the players.
MULTI-ETHNIC CASES
Keep an open mind as you examine cases coming from Vietnamese American law offices/legal service operations. Not all parties will be Vietnamese. Cases involving two cars of Vietnamese Americans are still popular; but in some parts of the country that is the old style case.
For several years it has been common to find crossovers with other ethnic groups, including various Asian minority groups, as well as Hispanic and Iranian claimants/plaintiffs. A good clue as to the nature of cases being handled by any office is to examine the names of the representatives listed in the ads. For example, Hispanic representatives tend to bring in Hispanic clients. In any event, don’t be surprised by accidents involving multi-ethnic claimants. It’s just too good a business to pass up.
MANAGEMENT SERVICE AND LEASE AGREEMENT
Medical and health care services are a vital part of the automobile accident industry. In Vietnamese American communities, it is not too unusual for an unlicensed person to own a medical office or a health care office. Try to determine the true ownership of the treating facilities.
It’s not uncommon for an administrator or manager to enter into an agreement with a medical doctor or chiropractor to operate a clinic. Sometimes the manager owns the clinic; sometimes the manager is only a front for the real owner. In many ways, this is an extension of the multi-service network. Maybe the doctor would call it a multi-service syndrome. It is obvious that this arrangement, combined with the control of the lawyer, puts the Vietnamese American accident industry at a distinct advantage. The potential for fraud is overwhelming.
The doctor will typically claim to be an independent contractor. The agreement is likely to provide the doctor with a small percentage of the gross, perhaps 10 percent with a monthly guarantee of about $2,500 or so, with the manager running the operation, controlling the books, controlling the bank account and basically controlling most of the money.
The written agreement is likely to provide for nondisclosure of business practices, including confidentiality as to the terms or even the existence of the written agreement.
NETWORKING
Probably the best way for the insurance industry to investigate and handle the deluge of auto accident cases coming from the Vietnamese American accident industry is to counter their multi-service/legal service networks with the industry’s own experienced investigative and claims people. Defense attorneys should have experience in similar matters. It is important to find out who is really in charge – and conversely who is the puppet. Meticulous attention to detail is vital when analyzing these claims. The industry should play hardball. Studying the other team for a while is almost like having a copy of the play back. All is not lost. Almost every play can be anticipated and countered, and the results can be nothing short of amazing.
Jay Langford is an attorney with the firm of Ure, Campbell & Associates. He is a recognized expert in Vietnamese staged accidents. He can be reached at (714) 505-1777.
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