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In March 2004, during the first months after Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor in the state of California, during the time he was aggressively and seemingly exclusively at work to reform the California Workers’ Compensation system, www.adjustercom.com published an article (Native Americans Offer Alternative Insurance To California Workers’ Compensation, by John Franklin, March 15th 2004) about Indian tribes writing “esoteric indemnity insurance” in the guise of legitimate substitute insurance for Workers’ Compensation or else as Workers’ Compensation itself—equal or better.

This article, which is still available to readers in the www.adjustercom.com News archives (look on the very bottom of the main News page, click on archives and scroll down to March 15, 2004) expressed the irony of the fact that at the time the California Workers’ Compensation system was egregiously out of balance and costing employers scandalously huge amounts of money—in a similar spirit that gasoline is costing people today—that Indian tribes, or “sovereign nations” as they are defined, were selling Indian reservation developed “Workers’ Compensation Insurance” radically less expensively than state legalized Workers’ Comp Insurance which had tripled by 2003 since the dawn of the 21st Century.

To many at the time with minds equipped with the gift of imagination, images could be evoked of either a business venture rife with innovation and genius, or a scam replete with a masterminded plot to exploit the needy, desperate, foolish, or just plain parsimonious who were burned out on the rip-off of California Workers’ Compensation. 

Well, as it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck today, more than four years later, the tribal “Workers’ Compensation” insurance provided by Independent Staffing Solutions wasn’t a Tribal venture at all, and was never based in a reservation or run on Tribal land.  It was a scam and a con-artist set-up engineered to take advantage of the disillusioned and gullible victims of the legitimate but beleaguered Workers’ Compensation system in California. 

Independent Management Resources (IMR) sold itself as a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), was operated by an individual named Greg Chmielewski, and managed the company called Independent Staffing Solutions (ISS).  New employees of Chmielewski were informed ISS was a “Tribal” staffing program and that their job was to stay “under the radar”.  It was clear to employees that no work was done on Tribal Land.  All the work was done in Roseville, California, and just prior to that Roseville location the work had been done from a location in Healdsburg, located in Sonoma County, California.

The phone lines from Roseville, which is located geographically in the 916 area code, showed a 760 phone number on its Caller ID.  The direct phone lines assigned for incoming calls were also numbers with 760 area codes.  Employees were told that this was necessary to give the illusion that they were calling from the Indian Reservation, the Fort Independence Tribe, in Inyo County, about 300 miles Northeast of San Diego.

The insurance offered by Independent Staffing Solutions was offered as a cheaper form of traditional, conventional Workers’ Compensation insurance.  It was referred to as the Occupational Injury Indemnity and Medical Benefits Coverage, (OIIMBC) which was sold as being the same if not better than Workers’ Compensation Insurance. 

By 2006, there were at least 60 to 75 clients of ISS—some were small businesses, some very small Mom & Pop shops, but some were large businesses.  One client was a large staffing company with an annual premium of approximately 1.5 million dollars. 

In 2004, Gallagher Bassett handled the claims for ISS, but soon dropped ISS’s business due to their discovery that ISS was not posting its reinsurance bonds.  Thus, when Gallagher Bassett dropped them, ISS turned to Abercrombie, Simmons & Gillette, known as AS&G, a TPA headquartered in Texas. 

Greg Chmielewski also marketed the Mainstay Business Solutions program, another Tribal company.  Mainstay, in 2004, was already being investigated by the California Department of Insurance because of the state’s suspicion that it was not really a Tribal venture and was possibly not being run on Tribal Land.  Chmielewski used the same exact Class Codes to write premiums as are used by state of California insurers and self-insureds.  The money from the premiums went into a Loss Fund to be used for paying claims and posting reserves, but by 2007 the Loss Fund was empty as all the money had been spent.

Now Independent Management Resources has filed for bankruptcy, and purportedly millions of dollars in unpaid claims are still outstanding.  When injured workers’ medical bills stopped getting paid in July 2007, $180,000 added up in just 6 weeks.  At around that time, the president of AS&G, Wanda Browning, wrote to all injured workers stating AS&G would cease to handle their claims.  

July 20, 2007  

AS&G Claims Administration, Inc. has ceased performing TPA services on behalf of Independent Management Resources, L.L.C. (“IMR”). 

All matters concerning your workers’ compensation claim should be directed to IMR through Roberta Garrett.  Ms. Garrett can be reached at: 

1328 Blue Oak Blvd.
Suite180
Roseville, CA  95678
Phone:  916-218-3114
Fax:  760-557-1513 

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Wanda Browning
President

Injured workers in the hundreds could not (and still cannot) get their prescriptions filled, their surgeries done, and are not receiving any temporary disability benefits.  Their claims have been scattered everywhere, and only a portion have been picked up by the Uninsured Employers Fund.  Horror stories abound, such as the one about a plumber who was working on a Starbuck’s location and sustained a severe injury to his arm, severing a major nerve.  He was repeatedly denied authorization for surgery, and lost temporary disability compensation and permanent disability compensation as owed to him by law.  Insider information alleges that Chmielewski told his claims manager that he authorized the surgery for the plumber, when in actual fact, he had not. 

At this time, now late Spring of 2008, the state investigation of ISS as announced in 2003 appears to have gone nowhere, and it seems but is not certain that no one wants to acknowledge that this ever happened.  The important thing at stake here is this all happened through the Fort Independence Tribe.  And most likely, as the smell suggests, the Fort Independence Tribe was conned and defrauded.

Allegations have been made that Greg Chmielewski paid cash for a 1.3 million dollar house, a Hummer and funded other business ventures. Records show real estate property in El Dorado Hills, California, however his companies, Independent Management Resources (IMR) and Management Resources Group (MRG) of California are both Nevada companies, with Bankruptcies filed accordingly.

Now the doors to his business are closed, the money is gone, and no T.D., no medical bills, and no surgeries or prescriptions are being paid.   Last year a sign was put on the business’s door, which read: IMR Has Moved.  But while that sign was up all the personnel were still inside.  The sign was taken down when USPS and FedEx packages were expected.

Today, all the websites for Independent Staffing Solutions are down and the phone numbers are disconnected.  Phone numbers posted on The Fort Independence website are also out of service.