Ryan Natividad, Former Costa Mesa Police Officer, Sentenced To Six Months In Jail For Workers' Compensation Fraud By Lonce LaMon - July 25, 2017
Ryan Patrick Natividad, a former Costa Mesa, California, Police Officer, was sentenced yesterday in Orange County Superior Court to six months in county jail, three years of formal probation, plus restitution in an amount to-be-determined by probation, for claiming and filing a false workers’ compensation claim.
The calculation for restitution at this time is over $66,000.
Natividad, now 32, had falsely claimed back on September 23, 2014 that he struck his hand against a brick wall near the Costa Mesa Police Department (CMPD) jail while transporting an arrestee for booking. He asserted that the arrestee stumbled into the wall, and in the course of this event he used his hand to prevent the arrestee from striking the wall.
In his injury paperwork, Natividad listed a jail employee as a witness to his accident. But that employee reviewed the jail surveillance camera footage and discerned that the accident didn’t happen. Much to his ignorance, the claimant hadn’t even realized that in the exact location he claimed he had an on-the-job accident, there was a surveillance camera.
The employee brought the video to his supervisor’s attention. That video was submitted with Natividad’s workers’ compensation claim to the City of Costa Mesa.
The City of Costa Mesa is permissibly self-insured, with AdminSure of Ontario as the Third-Party-Administrator handling its claims. AdminSure hired RJN Investigations to further investigate this claim. After a thorough investigation by RJN, this case was reported to the Orange County District Attorney’s office and was prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Noor Hasan.
This case went all the way to trial. On February 16th 2017, a jury found Ryan Natividad guilty of two felony counts: one for insurance fraud and the second for making a fraudulent statement. Naturally, Natividad had been previously fired by the Costa Mesa Police Department over this glaringly fraudulent claim.
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