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April 25, 2024
California Department of Industrial Relations and Cal/OSHA Will Honor Workers’ Memorial Day at Four Events in California on April 28th-29th 2024. Cal/OSHA Joining Partners in Arcadia, Richmond, San Diego and San Francisco.

April 23, 2024
California Division of Workers' Compensation Launches Online Portal for Submission of QME Medical-Legal Reports

April 22, 2024
California Division of Workers’ Compensation Posts Updated Time of Hire Notice

April 22, 2024
Sullivan on Comp Launches ChatSOC. It's an Innovative Chatbot for California Workers' Compensation Professionals Integrated with an Authoritative Legal Treatise

May 15th 2013 – The Testimony of Greg Redding: Greg Redding, Juliana Redding’s father, was the first witness to take the stand.   He was forthright, dignified, and composed.  He did not break down.  He looked and acted like the consummate professional.  He was natural, sincere, and self-assured.
  
He began his testimony by saying that he talked to his daughter almost every day, or else every other day.  He had last seen her in person in mid-February of 2008.  She’d lived in Arizona for most of her life but moved to California right after high school in 2005.
 
He’d met Dr. Munir Uwaydah through Juliana.  “I figured she was seeing him in some capacity,” he answered the DA, Stacey Okun-Wiese.  “She had told him that I was a pharmacist.”
 
By August of 2007, Greg Redding went to California to meet Dr. Uwaydah about a potential job offer.  “We were going to discuss this pharmacy position.  He had a pharmacy that he owned.  The pharmacy was in Camarillo.”
 
Uwaydah invited the Reddings to a Seafood restaurant, and all of them stayed up talking, eating and drinking until midnight.
 
“The position was that I would run the pharmacy operation—run all aspects,” Greg testified.  “At the time I was licensed in Arizona, but not in California.  Then, I took the exam in California.  I’m currently a licensed holder in California and Arizona.  He was looking for a pharmacist…”
 
Greg Redding suggested by his testimony that it might be a neat idea for him and his wife to spend some time in California.  They could be close to Juliana, do things with her, and be involved with her exciting career now in embryo.  And it might be a great career move for him. 

Patricia and Greg Redding, parents of murder victim Juliana Redding, leave the L.A. criminal courthouse in the late afternoon Wednesday, May 15th 2013.  Greg Redding gave extraordinary testimony as his wife looked on from the second row bench.  She wore a gorgeous quilted gold and pastels-colored suit with her sandy-blonde hair pulled back in her usual lovely French twist-like hair style.  She looked every bit the fashion model herself.  Copyright © Lonce LaMon. All rights reserved.

But the Reddings had deep roots in Tucson, Arizona, and it would be a big move for the family.  So, Greg Redding was decidedly circumspect. 

The pharmacy was called Golden State Pharmacy and was housed in a warehouse type of structure in Camarillo.   It was not a retail pharmacy, but was a private pharmacy for the purpose of servicing prescriptions for Uwaydah’s patients.   Behind it was a business called the Bubble Bakery that made custom soaps and shampoos.
 
When grilled by the DA of what the job and the operation would entail, Greg Redding explained that there would be prescriptions to be filled and distributed, plus in addition, some kind of compounding cream.  The DA asked Redding if he is licensed to make the compounded creams and he replied that yes, he is licensed to make creams.
 
What was a little uncanny was how Dr. Uwaydah said at first sight, “I’d like to offer you a job as a pharmacist.  I’ll pay you $186,000 a year,” Redding told the courtroom.   They eventually settled on a salary of $400,000.

Munir Uwaydah.  Copyright © Lonce LaMon.  All rights reserved. 
 
Someone within the Uwaydah organization had the formula for this product, this compounded cream which was a pain killer cream.  The DA asked, “Was Golden State Pharmacy under Dr. Uwaydah’s name?”  Greg Redding responded that no, it wasn’t.   So, the interesting thing is that earlier in his testimony Greg Redding said that Uwaydah had a pharmacy that he owned. 

So, Uwaydah owns this pharmacy but in a way he doesn’t own this pharmacy because it’s not in his name.   This might have been Greg Redding’s first clue that this was a racket.

Juliana Redding
 
The Reddings were very concerned about spoiling Juliana’s 21st birthday by dropping a bomb revealing the now questionable character of her consort.  They were considering not telling her until after her birthday trip with Uwaydah.  “My wife and I discussed it,” Greg testified, “We told her anyway because we were concerned for her safety.”
 
A couple of Juliana’s friends testified after Greg Redding. They told of how Juliana was very upset in Las Vegas, went into the Ladies’ Room of the first hotel they stopped at and wept.  Through her tears she expressed how betrayed she felt.   One friend recalled how Juliana fought with Uwaydah and kept calling him “a liar” over and over.   Juliana and her friends finally went to another hotel and ditched Uwaydah, but Uwaydah kept calling Juliana on her cell phone.   Juliana and her friends took a commercial flight home.
 
Greg Redding continued to testify, “I thought he was a fraud. “ But then Uwaydah got ahold of Greg and told him “everything I’d read about him was yellow journalism.  He was trying to vindicate himself.”
 
Uwaydah went on and on telling Greg Redding that all that information about him being married and having children that was published on the Internet was all a bunch of lies.  Journalists are just liars and, in effect, there are just people who are jealous and want to destroy him. 

Then poor Greg Redding began to question himself.  He started thinking and further testified, “Maybe what I was reading isn’t accurate.  I felt kind of foolish, like maybe I wrongly accused him of something.”
 
It can be implied from his testimony that he also likely felt bad that he may have ruined his daughter’s prospects.  The DA asked Greg if Uwaydah rekindled his relationship with Juliana after her birthday fiasco, and Greg said no.  Then she asked if Uwaydah and Juliana remained friendly, and he also said no.
 
Negotiations between Greg Redding and Uwaydah stopped.   Many weeks went by.   Greg Redding discussed with Juliana how she would feel if he restarted negotiations with Uwaydah, and Juliana said she was fine with it.  So, by December of 2007, Greg and Uwaydah reignited negotiations.

Kelly Soo Park is pictured here back in September of 2011 after court with her bail bondsman, Josh Herman.  She is out of custody on a 3.5 million dollar bond.  Munir Uwaydah described Kelly Soo as a "female James Bond who could always be relied upon".  Copyright © Lonce LaMon.  All rights reserved. 
 
That concerned Redding.   He had simply very matter-of-factly written everything into the contract Uwaydah had promised.   “It sounds really ridiculous now,” he said on the stand, seemingly embarrassed to be even retelling it now, “but he offered it”.
 
Another concern he had was the compounding operation.  The size of it.  “There were tens of thousands of these containers,” he recalled.  He saw things going from a simple compounding of some pharmaceuticals into a large manufacturing operation.  The pharmacy would have to hold a manufacturing license.
 
Greg Redding spoke of his mounting “uncomfortableness”.  He repeated the words “uncomfortable” and “uncomfortableness” as his testimony grew.  His gut was screaming at him.  “As the pharmacist in charge, I’m responsible for everything.  I felt the operation wasn’t prepared to do that type of work.”
 
That testimony about the “tens of thousands of containers” screams at the whole workers’ compensation industry in California and is validation that with no fee schedule at the time for compound medications for workers’ compensation patients, Uwaydah was gearing up with a grandiose scheme to create a mega-manufacturing operation that would rip off the workers’ comp industry for godzillions of dollars by prescribing these compounds to thousands of workers’ compensation patients in California.
 
Finally and decidedly, Greg Redding withdrew from negotiations with Uwaydah and firmly decided not to take the position.  The letter from his attorney to Uwaydah contained the line, “My client did not feel that Golden State Pharmacy was meeting all the requirements.”

Gregory and Patricia Redding, with their son Patrick in front of them, leave the downtown L.A. criminal court house on Wednesday afternoon.  They are a loving couple who were shattered by the murder of their aspiring model and actress daughter, Juliana, on March 15th 2008 in Santa Monica.  Kelly Soo Park is currently standing trial for Juliana's murder.  Copyright © Lonce LaMon. All rights reserved.
 
“I was withdrawing myself,” Redding testified.  The date of the letter was March 10, 2008.
 
For the next few days, Greg got several calls from Uwaydah’s associate Marissa Schermbeck.   He just let them go to his voice mail.  “I got several calls from her demanding me to answer the phone.  I never returned her phone calls.”
 
On the night of March 15th 2008, only five days after Redding’s lawyer sent the letter, Greg Redding’s daughter, Juliana, was murdered in her Santa Monica, California apartment on Centinella Avenue.