AAA Copy, LLC, a Rancho Cucamonga-based document copy and management company, entered a plea of No Contest to one felony count of Insurance Fraud. AAA Copy is a litigation support company for the legal community and the insurance industry. They specialize in document production and procurement, handling all aspects of discovery in workers’ compensation and other insurance cases.
This case was initially reported by the State Compensation Insurance Fund (SCIF) to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office Workers’ Compensation Insurance Fraud Unit in late 2013. According to Deputy District Attorney Dave Simon who prosecuted the case, in the summer of 2013, claims managers at SCIF noticed that for a period of time from 2011 through 2013, AAA Copy was including charges of sales tax on their billings for copy and document services related to Workers’ Compensation litigation. “This was something that no other copying service did for such services,” said Simon.
An investigation by the District Attorney’s Workers’ Compensation Fraud Unit determined that while sales tax was being charged by AAA Copy for these services, the money received was not being submitted to the Board of Equalization, or to any other state agency where such tax monies are supposed to be deposited; rather, it appeared that after charging sales tax to this customer, AAA Copy was keeping those funds in violation of the law.
The owner and operator of AAA Copy during the time period in which this crime was being committed was Inger Stewart Soto of Rancho Cucamonga. “However, it was learned prior to any case being filed by our office that Mr. Soto passed away in early 2014,” said Simon. “Therefore, only the company itself was considered for criminal charges.” On July 1, 2014, a felony criminal complaint was filed by the DA’s Workers’ Compensation Insurance Fraud Unit, charging AAA Copy with one felony count of Insurance Fraud, in violation of PC 550(b)(1).
On Aug. 15, 2014, a representative of the defendant company entered a plea of No Contest to that count as a felony, and was sentenced immediately. The Court placed the company on probation and ordered it to pay $2,469.74 in actual victim restitution to the State Compensation Insurance Fund, additional mandatory court fines and fees, and imposed a number of terms of probation on the company. According to Simon, AAA Copy was ordered by the court not to charge sales tax in cases not authorized by, or submitted to, a state agency tasked with collecting sales taxes. This case was investigated by District Attorney Investigator Rodney Tamparong.