Dominique was arrested along with her six member Ramirez family back in September 2010. She now, following her plea deal, remains in custody and was therefore left out of the court proceedings which took place yesterday for the rest of the family in Department 50 of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Downtown Los Angeles.  She will be formally sentenced on May 10th 2011, in the same department.

The wood paneled court room buzzed with voices just after 10 am as attorneys, a court reporter, clerks and paralegals mingled about in the cordoned area before the judge's bench discussing their cases and proceedings.  The judge at one point yelled out, "You want to talk, leave the court room!"  The deputy sheriff seated at the desk adjacent to the judge, in another moment cried out, "Quiet down! This aint no night club!" 

The defendants were led in, many men chained and handcuffed together in a long row, but it was hard to see where the Ramirez men were in the row due to so many people standing up in the bench area.  Each one of the members of the family's names were called, Christian Ramirez, Hugo Ramirez, Sandra Orozco, Dominique Boudreaux, Maria Ochoa, and Javier Ramirez; but when it came time to request the continuance of the case until January 4th 2011 and each defendant was to answer "yes", Deputy District Attorney, Samer Hathout, reminded the judge that Dominique Boudreax was not present, so she would not be answering "yes" in agreement to the continuance. It was hard to understand what was up with Dominique at that time with the background din of voices, however Samer Hathout explained to this writer after the proceedings out in the hallway that Dominique Boudreaux had copped a plea. 

Sandra Orozco, the wife of Christian Ramirez, stood up in her black pants suit with her very dark, almost black hair, at the defendants' table near the detainees in custody.  She looked attractive and well.  Sandra is out on bail, which was posted on October 14th, for $200,000.

Sandra Orozco ran the phoney shell investigations company called OnCall Investigation Services. Her bail was lowered during the progress of this case from $969,000 to $200,000, until that bail was posted October 14th and she was released.  Now, her husband Christian Ramirez, his brother Hugo Ramirez, and the father of both the young men, Javier Ramirez, remain in custody with bail set at 1.5 million dollars each.  Maria Ochoa, the wife of Javier Ramirez and mother of Christian and Hugo, remains in custody with her bail at $321,000.

The ongoing investigation of this case continues.  Law enforcement and the Department of Insurance have no further information for the Media.  It is believed by anonymous sources in management positions and above at both the Los Angeles County and Tristar Risk Management that the Ramirez family were merely pawns who were set up at Tristar and given instructions by an outside king pin.  No further arrests have been made, but are anticipated by hopefuls at the two organizations victimized by the embezzlement of roughly 1.5 million dollars out of the claims department handling Los Angeles County Workers' Compensation Claims administered by Tristar Risk Management out of their Santa Ana office.   

The embezzling happened roughly during 2007, 2008 and 2009. The discovery was triggered by an audit in June of 2009 which saw unusually high payments being made to three transportation companies and one private investigations firm.  These were the vendor companies owned by the Ramirez women, the two wives Dominique and Sandra, and the wife/mother Maria Ochoa.  These vendor services were predominantly never performed, were unnecessary, and when they were necessary they were subcontracted to other vendors for much less money than they were being paid by Tristar/LA County.  The two Ramirez sons were authorizing the payments as claims adjusters and the father was releasing the payments as a claims assistant clerk.  

Readers may write to writer Lonce LaMon at lonce@adjustercom.com