The Labor Commissioner’s Office has cited La Mina De Oro, Inc., and six other businesses $1,393,909 for wage theft violations affecting 107 workers. The Norco-based businesses operated a designer fragrance distribution warehouse and numerous retail stores in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, with locations in the Los Angeles area and Orange County.

The following businesses and individuals are named in the wage theft citations:

– – La Mina De Oro, Inc., a California Corporation
– – KD Nutley Properties, LLC, a California Limited Liability Company
– – CGC Trading Inc., a California Corporation
– – KD Distributors, Inc., a California Corporation
– – Desire Fragrances Inc., a California Corporation
– – Designer Fragrance Warehouse, a California Corporation
– – Desiree Canlas Nutley, an Individual.

The Labor Commissioner’s Office opened an investigation into the retailer’s operation in June 2018 based on a referral from the Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC), a nonprofit worker-rights community based organization in Ontario. The investigation showed that workers at the retailer’s stores were working off the clock before and after their shifts to receive merchandise from the retailer’s distribution warehouse. They were also forced to work through their meal and rest break periods, particularly during peak holiday seasons.

The citations issued included $126,274 in minimum wages, $102,622 in overtime wages, $188,596 in meal period premiums, $116,113 in rest period premiums, $185,831 in waiting time penalties, $24,563 in contract wages, $160,442 in liquidated damages, and $204,350 in damages to workers. The citations also include $162,750 in penalties payable to the state, $88,200 in civil penalties and $34,168 in interest.

When workers are paid less than minimum wage, they are entitled to liquidated damages that equal the amount of underpaid minimum wages plus interest. Waiting time penalties are imposed when the employer intentionally fails to pay all wages due to the employee at the time of separation. This penalty is calculated by taking the employee’s daily rate of pay and multiplying it by the number of days the employee was not paid, up to a maximum of 30 days.

Enforcement investigations typically include a payroll audit of the previous three years to determine minimum wage, overtime and other labor law violations, and to calculate payments owed and penalties due. Civil penalties collected are transferred to the State’s General Fund as required by law.

According to it’s website, Warehouse Worker Resource Center is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), organization founded in 2011, dedicated to improving working conditions in the warehouse industry in Southern California. It focuses on education, advocacy and action to change poor working conditions in the largest hub of warehousing in the country.

It assists workers dealing with issues of health and safety, wage theft and workers’ compensation when injured. It also serves as a community center for workers, family members and supporters interested in knowing their rights, joining with other workers to share experiences and learn from each other, and building a movement for workers’ rights in the Inland Empire and throughout Southern California.

“Workers in the warehouse industry who experience wage theft should report it to the Labor Commissioner’s Office,” added García-Brower. “My office will work to hold the employer accountable, ensure workers get their owed wages, and prevent law-abiding employers from being undercut.”

In 2018, Diana Barrett claimed injury to her psyche, hypertension and gastrointestinal system while employed as an animal services manager by the City of Yuba City. The employer denied her claim in its entirety.

Helayna Taylor, Ph.D. was the original psychological QME and issued a medical-legal evaluative report regarding applicant dated February 25, 2019. Dr. Taylor retired and the parties have stipulated that she is no longer a QME.

The parties disputed which documents may be sent to the replacement QME, Dr. Poston, and the contents of defendant’s proposed letter to the QME. Defendant objected to sending Dr. Taylor’s report to Dr. Poston.

The matter proceeded to trial regarding the issue of what documents should go to a new QME Dr. Poston.

The WCJ ordered that certain exhibits were not to be forwarded to Dr. Poston, including Dr. Taylor’s report. This aspect of the order was reversed in the panel decision of Barrett v City of Yuba City.

An adequate history and examination by the current QME should include review of the previous QME’s report in the absence of a basis for excluding the report from the record. The record reflects that Dr. Taylor’s report was obtained in accordance with the Labor Code. She was replaced as the QME because she retired. The record does not indicate a basis to preclude review of her report by the current QME.

Furthermore, Labor Code section 4062.3(a)(2) permits any party to provide medical records relevant to determination of the medical issues to a QME. (See also Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 35(a)(2) [the employer shall provide to the medical-legal evaluator “[o]ther medical records, including any previous treatment records or information, which are relevant to determination of the medical issue(s) in dispute.”)

The panel noted that this “language is fairly expansive in what medical records may be provided to the QME.”

“Dr. Taylor conducted a psychological evaluation of applicant and addressed her psychiatric claim of injury. Causation for applicant’s psychiatric claim remains in dispute since defendant has not accepted it as compensable. Dr. Taylor’s report is consequently relevant to determination of the medical issues in dispute and may be provided to the current QME for his review.

Bloomberg Law reports that a California attorney is facing charges for felony offenses stemming from an alleged marketing scheme involving the well known Jacoby & Meyers firm.

The 26 count criminal complaint filed by Orange County prosecutors alleges that 45 year old Steven Omid Mehr, used an illegal referral system to send potential clients to Jacoby & Meyers and load them up with fees in the process. His website claims his firm was awarded “Best Attorneys of America” by Rues Rating Service.

Mehr also allegedly used the system to direct business to copying and printing services providers he controlled, bilking unsuspecting clients and worker compensation insurance companies.

The indictment accuses Mehr of purchasing usage rights from Jacoby & Meyers in a referral-for-compensation criminal conspiracy for his attorney marketing firm, Web Shark 360. The URL for webshard360.com redirects to the Mehr website.

Mehr, has been a licensed attorney in California since 2005. Bloomberg Law reports that he described himself as “chairman of the Law Office of Jacoby & Meyers California operations” in a 2015 interview with an online legal industry publication. He purchased the L.A. Weekly in 2017 with other investors.

The indictment outlines a five-year conspiracy from 2011 to 2016 that allegedly involved Mehr and George Pershing Hobson, who is not an attorney.

Prosecutors say Mehr and Hobson’s arrangement violated California Labor Code Section 3215, which prohibits paid referrals in the worker’s compensation and insurance industries, as did their co-ownership of an interpretation company, National Translations Services.The indictment charges Mehr with two felony conspiracy counts for referral of clients for compensation, as well as 22 counts of insurance fraud.

He’s being prosecuted by Orange County Deputy District Attorney Noorul Hasan, who also is prosecuting Mehr. Hassan declined comment when reached by Bloomberg Law.

The case is California v. Mehr, Cal. Super. Ct., No. 21ZF0015. Mehr is set to be arraigned July 12 on the indictment, which a grand jury returned last April. Both defendants have posted $100,000 bond while they await trial.

The criminal indictment in California may have a similar pattern, and follows a proposed New Jersey class action against Jacoby & Meyers, in which the plaintiffs say a third-party service company extracted thousands of dollars in additional fees that should have already been paid by their lawyers.

The suit, filed in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, pertains to Nancy and Jeffrey Harding and their former lawyers, Finkelstein & Partners, LLP, and a similar dispute between Barbara J. Smalls and her former lawyers, Jacoby & Myers, LLP.for work sent to Total Trial Solutions, MedTrial Solutions and CineTrial Solutions.

According to the suit, the litigation support companies are owned by Andrew Finkelstein, a partner of both Jacoby and Finkelstein, and Kenneth Oliver, a former partner of both firms. Plaintiffs also allege that the Law Firm Defendants improperly marked-up the cost of Total Trial’s work in order to make a profit.

In a January 2020 ruling, U.S. District Judge John Michael Vazquez granted Jacoby & Meyers’ motion to dismiss a claim for unjust enrichment, but declined to dismiss the case based on a lack of standing for plaintiff Barbara Smalls. He also declined to throw out allegations that defendants Andrew Finkelstein, his firm Finkelstein & Partners, and a company called Total Trial Solutions are alter egos.

According to the lengthy federal court docket, motions are pending in the case which is not yet scheduled for trial.

What remains to be seen, is the evidence in the Orange County criminal case that may or may not connect the dots showing a similar practice in California as what is alleged in the New Jersey civil case, specifically with respect to workers’ compensation claims, and the liens generated for services in those cases. The focus in California will start with National Translations Services, and what is alleged by prosecutors.  And then to the copying and printing service providers.

The Department of Justice announced criminal charges against 14 defendants in seven federal districts across the United States for their alleged participation in various health care fraud schemes, that exploited the COVID-19 pandemic and resulted in over $143 million in false billings.

Multiple defendants offered COVID-19 tests to Medicare beneficiaries at senior living facilities, drive-through COVID-19 testing sites, and medical offices to induce the beneficiaries to provide their personal identifying information and a saliva or blood sample.

The defendants are alleged to have then misused the information and samples to submit claims to Medicare for unrelated, medically unnecessary, and far more expensive laboratory tests, including cancer genetic testing, allergy testing, and respiratory pathogen panel tests.

In some cases, and as alleged, the COVID-19 test results were not provided to the beneficiaries in a timely fashion or were not reliable, risking the further spread of the disease, and the genetic, allergy, and respiratory pathogen testing was medically unnecessary, and, in many cases, the results were not provided to the patients or their actual primary care doctors.

The proceeds of the fraudulent schemes were allegedly laundered through shell corporations and used to purchase exotic automobiles and luxury real estate.

The Fraud Section is prosecuting the cases in the following districts: Western District of Arkansas, Northern District of California, Middle District of Louisiana, Central District of California, Southern District of Florida, District of New Jersey, and the Eastern District of New York.

Northern District of California

Mark Schena, 58, of Los Altos, California, the president of Arrayit Corporation, is charged along with two others, the Arrayit Vice President of Marketing and the President of an Arizona marketing organization, in connection with the submission of over $70 million in false and fraudulent claims for allergy and COVID-19 testing. The superseding indictment against Schena includes new counts of health care fraud, a conspiracy to pay kickbacks, and payment of kickbacks in connection with false and fraudulent statements about the existence, regulatory status, and accuracy of an Arrayit COVID-19 test. The conspiracy allegedly sought to induce the ordering of the Arrayit COVID-19 test and to bundle, i.e., require combination with, the COVID-19 test and Arrayit’s medically unnecessary allergy test. The COVID-19 test results were not provided in a timely fashion and were not reliable in detecting COVID-19.

Central District of California

Petros Hannesyan, 36, of Burbank, California, was charged with the theft of government property and wire fraud in connection with $229,454 that he obtained from COVID-19 relief programs. Hannesyan, the owner of Hollywood Home Health Services, Inc., a home health agency located in Los Angeles, allegedly misappropriated funds from the CARES Act Provider Relief Fund and submitted false loan applications and a false loan agreement to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, rather than use the funds for COVID-19 patient care and to support small businesses experiencing disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abraham Alex was employed as a security officer/guard by All Nation Security Services, Inc.

On August 24, 2017 a homeless person came inside the lobby of the Greyhound bus station where he was working. The homeless person was dancing and speaking badly in the lobby. An employee asked Applicant to escort the homeless person outside. Applicant asked whether the homeless person had a ticket and asked him to leave. The homeless person did not leave and cursed at Applicant and hit Applicant in the left temple with a fist. Applicant fell outside the lobby and the homeless person ran off.

He suffered a traumatic brain injury with evidence of intracranial hemorrhage for which he underwent surgery and continues to have symptoms associated with concussion. He filed a workers’ compensation claim for his injuries.

Company rules state that the security officer is expected to manage aggressive behavior or disturbed persons but refrain from chasing, restraining, and subduing individuals. The employee manual it provides that the security offices are “expected to challenge persons in a professional manner to enforce access to restricted areas” but are not to put themselves in danger. It further instructs officers to diffuse incidents verbally or call the proper authorities and refrain from touching, tackling, chasing, assaulting or grabbing anyone.

The employer denied the injury claiming it was outside the scope of his employment. However the WCJ concluded that “the record shows Applicant was performing his job as a security guard in furtherance of the Greyhound business when he was injured. This is true even if the injury was caused by an impact with the ground outside the station or if Applicant violated a policy in the process. Applicant is entitled to workers’ compensation benefits.”

Reconsideration was denied in the panel decision of Abraham Alex v All Nation Security Services Inc.

In Westbrooks v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. and Greyhound Lines (1988) 203 Cal.App.3d 249 [53 Cal.Comp.Cases 157], the Court of Appeals stated: Employee misconduct, whether negligent, willful, or even criminal, does not necessarily preclude recovery under workers’ compensation law. In the absence of an applicable statutory defense, such misconduct will bar recovery only when it constitutes a deviation from the scope of employment.

In determining whether particular misconduct takes an employee outside the scope of his employment, “A distinction must be made between an unauthorized departure from the course of employment and the performance of a duty in an unauthorized manner. Injury occurring during the course of the former conduct is not compensable. The latter conduct, while it may constitute serious and willful misconduct by the employee (Lab. Code, § 4551), does not take the employee outside the course of his employment.”

If the employment places an applicant in a location and he or she was doing an activity reasonably attributable to employment or incidental thereto, an applicant will be in the course of employment and the injury may be industrially related. (Western Greyhound Lines v. Ind. Acc. Com. (Brooks) (1964) 225 Cal.App.2d 517 [29 Cal.Comp.Cases 43].)