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The next case indictment by the Orange County District Attorney’s office for workers’ compensation fraud against a service provider has been postponed for some days. Deputy District Attorney Shaddi Kamiabipour is on vacation and the DA’s office is waiting to catch up until next week. But, the indictment is coming soon. The identity of the provider about to be indicted is still unknown by anyone outside of the OCDA’s office.

The Orange County District Attorney, Tony Rackauckas, and his troops are working excessively hard to eradicate insurance fraud in Orange County. The abuse of the insurance industry by service providers, especially, has reached epidemic levels. The fight continues unabated…

The next court appearance for the Aspen Medical Resources group—Landen Mirallegro, Jeffrey Campau, Abraham Korshad, and Ryan McCracken—is set for this Friday, July 11th in OC Superior Court in court room C-30. This Aspen Medical case is based upon excessive charges for durable medical equipment—particularly for a hot-cold therapy machine rented to workers’ compensation patients—in egregious excess of the value of the machine. The dual hot-cold machine was rented as two separate units—a hot machine and a cold machine—which resulted in double billing in conjunction with excessively high fees for each.

The next court appearance for Sim Hoffman, M.D. and Thomas Heric, M.D. will take place on Friday, July 18th 2014 in OC Superior Court in court room C-57. The Hoffman-Heric case is based upon allegations of phoney sleep studies with no medical value which were concocted purely for the purposes of billing the workers’ comp claims departments. Hoffman, a radiologist, also billed for single fiber EMGs, which are a very rare tests used upon few patients and are painful procedures requiring hospitalization. Hoffman not only is not qualified to perform these procedures, but also never performed the procedures nor did any other physician affiliated with his practice. He merely billed for them when these services were never rendered.

The Landmark Medical case will be back in Orange County court on Friday, August 8th. In which court room, this writer does not yet know. The District Attorney’s office cannot yet discuss this case with the Media as the Grand Jury transcripts have not yet been released to the defense. Neither the prosecuting attorney, Shaddi Kamiabipour, nor the DA Spokesperson, Farrah Emami, as of today’s date is authorized to discuss any of the circumstances surrounding these indictments. It is still not known what date the release of the transcripts to the defense will happen. All that has been released to the Media and to the public are the two written indictments themselves.

In an abridged, Readers’ Digest nutshell description, this Landmark case is based upon huge monetary kick-backs paid to physicians in exchange for prescribing compound cream medications to workers’ compensation patients at exorbitant prices. The kick-backs paid to a set of physicians, chiropractors, and pharmacists within the past few years have been in the millions.

Since the DA’s office cannot comment yet on this Landmark case, only the defense has commented to other Media outlets. Richard Moss, a Pasadena-based criminal defense attorney who is representing the President and CEO of Landmark Medical Management, Kareem Ahmed, and also is the defense counsel of Sim Hoffman, M.D., has said by phone in the past to this writer that the DA’s office has a financial incentive to get money from the Fraud Assessment Commission. He made this comment by phone to this writer last Fall of 2013, when commenting on the case of Sim Hoffman, M.D.

Richard Moss, right, leaves the Orange County Superior Court building on August 19th 2011, with his client, Sim Hoffman, M.D. Moss is a diminutive figure weighing not much over 110 pounds. He was in a near-fatal car accident in 2013; his doctor told him it was a miracle he survived. Photo by Lonce LaMon, all rights reserved.

The DA’s office has to get paid for its time, energy, and work just as any defense attorney has to get paid by his client. To make a to-do about the DA having a financial incentive to get money from the Fraud Assessment Commission that receives fees from the surcharge on employer workers’ compensation premiums is preposterous; it is no different from any defense attorney being paid by an accused fraudster to come up with a defense strategy.

For Richard Moss to argue, as quoted in a June 20th article by WorkCompCentral: “There is no question that the investigation and prosecution of insurance fraud is subsidized 100% by the Fraud Assessment Commission. At a time when budgets are strained to cover all costs, there is an incentive to do whatever is necessary to secure as much funding as possible,” is ridiculous.

To do whatever is necessary? Meaning, what? To needlessly prosecute innocent service providers? A DA’s office would do this just to keep a staff of prosecuting attorneys employed and to keep the grants from the Fraud Assessment Commission coming in? We could make a corollary, sophistical type argument about defense attorneys who come up with far-fetched and outlandish defense stories in an attempt to defend egregious fraudsters in order to keep the funds rolling in from a stream of fraudsters ripping off the insurance industry.

Kay Rackauckas, current defense counsel for Landon Mirallegro, searches through her handbag while leaving out the back door of the Orange County Superior Court building on April 25th 2014 after court proceedings for the Aspen Medical defendants. Photo by Lonce LaMon, all rights reserved.

The same lawyers come to defend one perpetrator of insurance fraud and then move over to the next. Kay Rackauckas, the former wife of District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, is now defending Landon Mirallegro of Aspen Medical Resources. Kay defended the notorious Kelly Soo Park for a time during her pre-trial phase back in 2011 for the murder of Juliana Redding. Kay then later resigned over the conflict-of-interest issue over even more notorious, Munir Uwaydah, M.D., paying for Kelly Soo Park’s defense.

Uwaydah is perceived as one of the “Top 10” of physician workers’ compensation fraudsters in California history. The acquittal of Kelly Soo Park for the murder of Juliana Redding is one of the most scandalous jury verdicts of our time.