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Roberta Garrett, Former Independent Staffing Solutions Claims Manager, Tells How Greg Chmielewski Put All The Tribal Claims Into A Reservation Black Hole, part 1
By Pauline Grant - September 22, 2008

In late Spring of 2006, Roberta Garrett was searching on www.monster.com when a couple of positions really caught her eye.  Both of them were titled workers’ compensation positions.  They were for a brand new company coming to Roseville, California.  One was a claims position as “Claims Administrator”. 

 

“Basically, they were looking for someone to take a leadership role in an employee based company for claims dispersed across California,” Garrett explains.  They wanted someone with at least six years in Human Resources.  This job would be working from the employer’s side.  And Garrett’s background is on the employer’s side in an HR capacity.  “So, I decided to send in my resume, and then, lo and behold, I got a phone call.” 

 

She was granted an interview, and during the interview understood she was interviewing with Independent Management Resources.  “That was the only company name that was disclosed to me.”

 

Independent Management Resources was moving into this brand new office in Roseville.  During the interview Roberta noticed boxes everywhere.  She noticed new computers and phones just being installed.  They were hiring all new staff.

 

“I was told they had numerous clients.  So, it was clear that this was a brand new company coming to Roseville and it looked exciting!”  There were no red flags at this point.  IMR told her they had all kinds of different programs.  They did HR consulting.  They even did captives in addition to traditional workers' comp . 

 

“Then, after my interview I went to their website, which was the Independent Management Resources’ website, and that website touted the same thing.  They had sovereign nations, also, included in the captive.  And other workers’ comp programs.  When I was interviewed by Gregory Chmielewski over the phone, Chmielewski told me in that interview that one of the first things he would need me to do would be to go to one of his casinos that was having some serious risk problems.  So, it didn’t really strike me that any sovereign nation thing would be any big deal because I did know that many casinos are under Tribal programs.  I have talked to adjusters who have handled the real Indian casinos, so it seemed like a really good opportunity to learn about a whole bunch of different workers’ comp.” 

 

So, Roberta accepted the position thinking she was off to a casino!  And she imagined the spas….  The first day of her employment was June 28, 2006.  But, within a week she had the thought, “I don’t think there’s a casino.”  And then she realized, “They don’t have a bunch of clients.” 

 

 

Independent Management Resources had only one client, and that was Independent Staffing Solutions.  That was the company that had all the different clients.  “And then another thing I realized,” Garrett explains over how she kind of tripped over the caller ID on her land line having a 760 area code when Roseville is in the 916 area code, “is that I’m sitting in Roseville, but I’m supposed to tell people that I’m sitting in Fort Independence.  And I had never even heard of Fort Independence.”   

 

Within a week Garrett realized that something was going on but she didn’t know what.  She had a feeling of foreboding and an intuition that something was seriously wrong.  Her gut drove her to do some Internet searches.  “And I started seeing stuff about Tribal Staffing.  I started seeing other names of companies.” She found information on a group called Mainstay.  “And I realized, wow, we used to be Mainstay.  Our clients used to be with Mainstay.” 

 

Garrett kept digging on the Internet.  Once she knew she was working for Independent Staffing Solutions, she did a search on ISS and found an article stating they were being investigated.  “It seemed that around 2003, 2004 that they (Independent Staffing Solutions) were being looked at, but then, all of a sudden, there’s just no more information.  Yet, the more digging I did, the more I realized, ‘Oh, my gosh… I’m in a real bad place.’  And it was on July 28, 2006, that I called the (California) Department of Insurance.” 

 

Over the next year of her employment, Garrett was in consistent and persistent communication with the Department of Insurance. Since her termination from IMR/ISS in September of 2007, she has continued to work with the state investigators and state agencies.  But with a lot of frustration and aggravation. 

 

 

“I have been jerked around like a marionette,” Roberta emotes.  “I can’t tell you how much this investigation was botched.  I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent not wanting to even get out of bed.” 

 

It was in May of 2007 that the ISS checking account was seized.   According to Garrett, she never got a straight answer as to who seized it, or whether a lien was put on all the funds, or what.  “We were told to just say that it was a banking error.  But, at that point claimant checks were bouncing, payroll checks were bouncing; and I’m sitting there thinking, ‘at any moment the good guys are going to break down the doors and just save us.’”

 

 

But, it never happened.  Garrett goes on with, “Since I had reported many things, I very incorrectly assumed that the agencies are on this, we’re going to be okay.  The injured workers are going to be okay.  But, as this went on, nothing happened.”

 

Then, in July of 2007, the Third Party Administrator, AS&G based in Houston, Texas, that was handling the claims for Independent Staffing Solutions, finally said that they were through.  According to Garrett, AS&G, after being jerked around with their invoices, claimant and vendor checks not being mailed as promised, said "we're through!”  Then, they boxed up all the claim files and sent them to the ISS office in Roseville.  “And there I sat,” Garrett says, “with all these files, all these claims, and no one handled them.”

 

 

At around the same time, the defense counsel law firm that had been representing ISS, Laughlin, Falbo, Levy & Moresi, withdrew.  The entire firm got off all the cases because “ISS was no longer treating the cases like they are supposed to.” 

 

Garrett goes on further quite dramatically about how the checks were just bouncing like rubber balls.  ISS wasn’t taking care of any of the bills.  Anything that came in pertaining to the files was not even being opened.  “At that point we were being transferred over to a new company named Empyrean.  And by that time I was absolutely in a frantic mode.  For the last three months straight, I had been listening to injured workers crying, begging me with where’s their TTD check, begging me with what do I do, my TTD check bounced, doctors’ offices calling me non-stop telling me that people needed their prescriptions, people needed their physical therapy, people needed surgery, and I had no TPA, no utilization review, no nothing…”

 

Garrett was bombarded with a machine-gun-like fire of calls from injured workers, applicants’ attorneys, and even a call from the WCAB with a claimant there upset that he couldn’t get his pain medication.   She was trying to tell all these people that they were going to have to get some help elsewhere because she couldn’t help them.  There were claimants who couldn’t pay their rents.  And she heard that some doctors were going to go after the injured workers for the medical bills. 

 

“At one point I confronted Greg Chmielewski, and he asked me how I was doing, and I just exploded!  And I gave him the ‘How do you think I am doing?!!’ response.   I went over the fact of all these people, all these phone calls.  I had calls that were coming to my cell phone.  I have a daughter who can tell you about people calling and crying and saying that they couldn’t pay their rent.  They couldn’t feed their kids.  This is nothing that you should be experiencing in this system.  And at that point Greg Chmielewski told me, okay, no one should have to have this much stress, so we’re going to make these files disappear!

 

“So, the files got boxed up, and Greg put together a new letter to go out to the claimants.”  This was the second letter to the claimants, the first one having been the one AS&G had sent out to the claimants stating that they were no longer handling the claims and that anyone with a claim should call Roberta Garrett directly.  That letter had escalated the calls to Roberta, so this second letter from Chmielewski to the claimants stated that there was a new ISS claims team, and that all correspondence should go to the Tribal Appeals Board at the address of the tribe itself.  “And there was a new toll free number.  But, if one called that toll free number, no one answered.  One just got a recording stating ‘You’ve just reached the claims department, leave your name and number.’

 

 

“In the meantime, I continued to get threats.  I got phone calls from the bill collectors, from the different hospitals, from angry applicants’ attorneys saying ‘wait a minute, we call this number and no one is there’.  So, this was how the ending was coming.  When all along, it was clear there was no reinsurance, there was no money tucked away to cover these reserves.  I figured that out from early on; and that’s why I called the Department of Insurance.  And everything that I feared could happen, is what did happen.

 

“And at the end, all of these claims went into this big Black Hole. The claims were picked up, they were boxed up, and away they went.”

 

To God knows where…

 

To be continued on Wednesday, September 24th 2008 with part 2 of Roberta Garrett…

 

You may write to Pauline Grant at pauline@adjustercom.com

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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