Justicia Legal Case Now Steeped In Discovery In Orange County
By Lonce Lamonte - September 24, 2017
Phase one of the “Justicia Legal” case, which involves $300,000,000 in estimated losses to workers’ compensation and liability insurance payers, according to Orange County District Attorney, Tony Raukauckas, is now deeply ensconced in the discovery period. 11 complaints were filed against six cappers and 10 applicants’ attorneys on June 5th 2017. Partner cappers Carlos Arguello III and Edgar Gonzales were recruiting and exploiting mostly Spanish-speaking-only clients to convert to fraudulent claimants from Los Angeles all the way down to the California-Baja California border for over a decade.
Carlos Arguello and the four others in his clan who are named defendants in one complaint, and Edgar Gonzalez, his capper partner who is charged separately, illegally indulged in unlawful referral of clients-patients for monetary compensation from attorneys while improperly billing and filing liens for photocopy services.
Court documents now state Carlos Arguello’s residence address is in Chula Vista, which is less than 10 miles from the border. Previously it was stated by the DA’s office that he resides in Tustin. But perhaps he resides in both places.
Chula Vista is predominantly a Spanish speaking community. One can sit at the Chula Vista Costco in the food court during the most crowed time of the day and not hear one word of English being spoken.
The applicants’ attorneys charged are:
The discovery that was handed out by the prosecution to all the defendants was apparently identical. A motion that was filed on July 20th 2017 by Payman Zargari’s attorney, David Katz, complained that the discovery as presented was unduly burdensome and impractical. He called it a “data dump” that was distributed to all the defendants. On a thumb drive, Katz cited there was the following:
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From banks: 386,646 pages of bank records
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Of Discovery regarding Warrants: 160 pages of Warrants
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Of Discovery from EDD (Employment Development Department) records: pages 161—654 from EDD
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Of Discovery from the Secretary of State: pages 665 – 991 from the Secretary of State
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Evidence: consisting of 121,195 pages
Defense attorney David Katz acknowledged that some of the bank records were marked as not being relevant to his client Payman Zargari’s case. He thanked the prosecution for making those indications. But he went on to express that the remaining files could not be word searched and were not indexed in any other way than by the bank from which they were taken. Katz didn’t specify a number that “some” meant. But even if it were half of the pages, that would leave nearly 200,000 pages that have to be looked through in order to see if they pertain to his client.
Katz brought up case law that discussed how regularly an open file policy may satisfy a prosecutor’s Brady obligation, but in a specific Supreme Court case the court admonished that an open file policy would not satisfy discovery obligations if it imposed unduly burdensome obligations on the defense to find the relevant materials. (Emphasis added).
These huge volumes of discovery have presented themselves as specters in other concurrent prosecutions of fraud and have borne out vociferous protests from the defense. This has happened in the Criminal Organization Munir Uwaydah case currently being prosecuted in downtown Los Angeles, and also in the present Sim Hoffman, M.D. prosecution in Orange County.
David Katz requested of the court to order the People (by August 7th 2017) to identify the documents on the thumb drive that are specifically relevant to his client, Payman Zargari. He called attention also to the evidence pages numbering 121,195 that have no search functions at all.
His motion also asked for other discovery, specifically a video tape that is believed to have been taken by the prosecution investigators of all the “intake forms” from Payman Zargari’s workers’ compensation practice.
Payman Zargari will be back in court with his counsel David Katz on November 6th 2017 in court room C-55.
Carlos Arguello III with his codefendants in his complaint (Tanya Arguello, Soriada Veronica Castro, Boris Mikhalovic Dadiomov, Dulce Gallegos) will be back in court on October 13th 2017 in court room C-55. Carlos Arguello and his clan have all pleaded not-guilty to all counts plus the enhancements and will be moving on with discovery and other pretrial actions.
Edgar Gonzalez will next appear in court on October 3, 2017 in C-55. His retained attorney is now documented as Gabriela C. Rivera of the Bird firm (Bird Marella Boxer Wolpert…) of Century City-- thus in obvious association with Benjamin Gluck. Gabriela Rivera attended Yale Law School and passed the bar in California in 2012.
Also appearing in court room C-55 on October 3rd 2017 will be lawyers Farai Rezai, Robin Jacobs, Dennis Fusi, John Jansen, Jon Woods, and Lionel Giron.
Attorney Robert Slater has his Preliminary Hearing set for October 16th 2017 in C-55 and will next appear in court on that date.
lonce@adjustercom.com
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