Tag: 2016 News

Five defendants were arraigned in Orange County for committing over $635,000 in tax and insurance fraud and failing to pay employees prevailing wage on public works contracts.

Babak Brian Abghari, 36, Newport Coast, Homayoun Harry Abghari, 57, Huntington Beach, Julio Roberto Alvarado, 47, San Pedro, Cody Lawson, 34, Long Beach, Phyllis Martinez, 51, Anaheim, are each charged with eight felony counts of taking and receiving a portion of a worker’s wage on a public work, 56 felony counts of recording a false or forged instrument, six felony counts of making a false statement to discourage an injured worker from claiming workers’ compensation benefits, and seven felony counts of willful failure to pay taxes, with sentencing enhancement allegations for property loss over $200,000.

Babak Aghari and Homayoun Aghari are also charged with three felony counts of misrepresenting facts to a workers’ compensation insurance company.

If convicted, the defendants face a maximum sentence of 49 years and six months in state prison. The defendants are scheduled for a pre-trial hearing on May 12, 2016, at 8:30 a.m. in Department C-55, Central Justice Center, Santa Ana.

Houmayoun Abghari and Babak Abghari are accused of owning and operating PCN3, a general contracting company that mainly conducts public works projects. Between Jan. 1, 2000, and March 30, 2015, the defendants are accused of fraudulently paying PCN3’s employees less than the prevailing wage in cash, and keeping the extra money owed to their employees. The defendants are accused of “shorting” the victims’ hours on certified payroll reports and/or requiring their victims’ to give cash back.

Martinez is accused of working as an office clerk at PCN3 and knowingly signing fraudulent certified payroll records under penalty of perjury.

Lawson is accused of working as a superintendent and Alvarado is accused of working as a foreman for PCN3 on public work’s projects. Lawson and Alvarado are accused of not paying employment taxes. Lawson and Alvarado are accused of giving paychecks or cash to victims for their work on the projects.

Houmayoun Abghari and Babak Abghari are accused of discouraging the victims from filing for workers’ compensation benefits after being injured on the work. Houmayoun Abghari and Babak Abghari are accused of knowingly filing false tax returns in which they understated the pay and amount of hours that their employees received.

One of the victims contacted the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who notified the Orange County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA). The OCDA and the Department of Industrial Relations and Labor Commissioners Office investigated this case.

Deputy District Attorney Donde McCament of the Insurance Fraud Unit is prosecuting this case.

When a paralyzed mother crossed the finish line of the 26.2-mile London Marathon in a bionic suit, it marked a watershed moment for wearable technology; the exoskeleton had arrived.

The recent FDA approval of the exoskeleton, which enables paraplegics, amputees and people with muscle or nerve damage to walk, is the latest milestone in the new world of wearable technology for injured workers, according to Zack Craft, ATP, Vice President of Rehab Solutions and Complex Care Education at One Call Care Management (“One Call”).

Craft spoke on wearable technology and workers’ compensation at the RIMS 2016 Annual Conference held April 10 – 13 in San Diego, California, along with Felicia Amenta, Workers’ Compensation Program Manager for San Diego County and Imperial Schools. Their presentation, “The New Game Changer in Managing Worksite Health: Wearable Technology,” introduced attendees to ways in which wearable technology can benefit injured workers, their employers and payers.

Speaking about the exoskeleton, Craft noted: “For an employee with catastrophic injuries, the exoskeleton holds enormous potential to give them back a part of their lives they thought was lost forever.”

Other types of wearable technology that are applicable in the workplace range from postural devices to activity trackers to GPS locators. Benefits of these devices include wellness, prevention of injuries, increased productivity, compliance with treatment regimes to prevent injury and avoid re-injury, and enhanced independence and quality of life.

As wearable technologies are introduced into the workplace, and especially for the treatment of injured workers, specialists such as assistive technology experts can advise claims managers on which technologies may be most appropriate, taking into consideration the long-term view of the injury, the home environment, and patients’ needs for functionality and independence.

Assistive technology is an umbrella term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and also includes the process used in selecting, locating, and using them. Assistive technology promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to, or changing methods of interacting with, the technology needed to accomplish such tasks.

RESNA, the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America, advances the field by offering certification, continuing education, and professional development; developing assistive technology standards; promoting research and public policy; and sponsoring forums for the exchange of information and ideas to meet the needs of our multidisciplinary constituency. RESNA certified assistive technology experts can be located nationwide by using the search tool on the RESNA website.

California State University in Northridge, Center on Disabilities just finished its 31st Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference last month in San Diego. For over 30 years, the Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, has provided an inclusive setting for researchers, practitioners, exhibitors, end users, speakers and other participants to share knowledge and best practices in the field of assistive technology. In 2015, the conference drew more than 4,800 people to San Diego. The annual conference is a forum that showcases cutting edge technology and practical solutions.The conference is the largest of its kind in the world. The 32nd Annual CSUN Conference is scheduled for February 27 to March 4, 2017 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego.

CSUN also just launched two new master’s degrees in assistive technology. It says that assistive technology is “one of the fastest-growing segments of the rapidly expanding health and human services field.”

Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board Chairwoman Ronnie Caplane is retiring from state service at the end of April. She was appointed commissioner in 2003 by Governor Gray Davis, reappointed in 2009 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and appointed Chairwoman by Governor Jerry Brown in 2011.

During her tenure on the Appeals Board, the California workers’ compensation laws underwent two major reforms. The first came with SB 899 in 2004; later, as Chairwoman, she presided over the first judicial body to review cases that fell under SB 863’s landmark 2013 reforms.

“Ronnie Caplane managed WCAB through significant legislative changes, and has made valuable contributions to improving the workers’ compensation system,” said DIR Director Christine Baker.

Commissioner Caplane was admitted to the State Bar in 1975 after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and UC Hastings College of Law. She was an associate attorney for Lewis, Rouda and Lewis from 1976 to 1978 and then a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division from 1979 to 1982. Caplane was also a partner with Bruyneel and Caplane from 1983 to 1985, and a freelance writer and columnist for East Bay area publications the Piedmonter and the Montclarion from 1992 to 2006. She has published essays in newspapers throughout the country including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the Recorder, Legal Times, and various Jewish publications. Her essays have also appeared in several anthologies.

She has also served as a member and President of the Piedmont School Board. Her leadership in education and work to improve the East Bay community led Assemblywoman Wilma Chan to name her Woman of the Year in 2004. Her commitment to public education and to restore California to its status as a national leader led Caplane to pursue a run for the California Assembly.

In 2006, she made an unsuccessful run for a seat in the Assembly, coming in third with 12.5 percent of the vote in a five-way Democratic primary won by Assembly Member Sandré Swanson.

Commissioner Caplane suffered the tragic loss of her husband Joe Remcho – a prominent Bay Area lawyer and influential adviser to many of California’s most powerful politicians – in January 2003 as a result of a helicopter crash in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta while he was the solo pilot of the craft. At the time of his death he was a partner in the San Leandro law firm of Remcho, Johansen & Purcell. For two decades, the firm has represented the state Legislature in redistricting matters and other cases involving voter initiatives, term limits and campaign finance. Remcho’s clients included Gov. Gray Davis, Attorney General Lockyer, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Mayor Willie Brown, the former state Assembly speaker. After his death she wrote a series of “grief columns” that drew an overwhelming response from readers.

Commissioner Caplane volunteered thousands of hours for a myriad of community organizations including Oakland’s Temple Sinai, HEROS, the Henry Robinson Center and the Piedmont schools. She created a minority law school scholarship through the Bar Association of San Francisco in her husband’s honor.

Following retirement, she will be joining Zenith Insurance Company as a Vice President.

A Napa doctor has agreed this month to pay the U.S. government $400,000 to settle allegations that he filed false claims for Medicare reimbursement,. The agreement with Ali Vaziri, M.D., a gastroenterologist, settles the civil allegations but it provides that , while agreeing to pay the $400,000, Vaziri does not admit to any liability. Vaziri is a board-certified gastroenterologist with a practice called the “Center For Digestive & Liver” in Napa.

Federal attorneys said that between 2007 and 2011, Vaziri billed Medicare for patient office visits that were longer and included more services than the consultations he actually provided. He was also alleged to have billed separately for office visits that were required to be billed together with colonoscopies.

Vaziri, a 1990 graduate of the Tufts University School of Medicine, has faced a number of legal challenges in recent years.

In June 2015, the Medical Board of California placed Vaziri on seven years’ probation and prohibited him from supervising physician assistants because of a criminal conviction for tax fraud.

In June 2014, Vaziri was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for tax fraud after cheating the IRS of more than $116,700, according to federal prosecutors. Vaziri, who was indicted in 2012, served his sentence at a federal facility in Lompoc, said his attorney, Malcolm Segal of Sacramento, in a 2015 interview.

The physician was sentenced under a plea agreement reached in early 2014, when he agreed to plead guilty to four counts of filing false income tax returns between 2005 and 2008. The charges were filed in connection with income and expenses from his medical practice. In 2005, Vaziri falsely inflated his business expenses, causing the IRS to lose $14,535 in taxes and then repeated the fraud for the next three years, underpaying $60,620 in 2006, $27,476 in 2007 and $14,072 in 2008, according to U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag.

In exchange for his guilty plea, entered in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, federal officials dropped health care fraud allegations.

Vaziri attracted the attention of federal officials beginning in June 2009 when he was suspected of overbilling and falsely billing Medicare, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors. As the investigation progressed, federal investigators delved into potential income tax fraud. In June, 2012 he was was charged by a federal grand jury in San Francisco with nine counts of health care fraud and six counts of filing a false federal income tax return.

“Dr. Vaziri will be fully permitted to practice medicine. Any restrictions will not impede his ability to practice,” said Segal according to the 2015 report in the Napa Valley Register.

The Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news organization based in Emeryville, California, and has conducted investigative journalism since 1977. It is known for producing stories that reveal scandals or corruption in government agencies and corporations. In 2010, CIR launched its California Watch reporting project. Its current investigatory effort exposes fraud in California’s workers’ compensation system. An analysis of more than a million court cases details how workers have been swept into medical billing mills, prescribed unregulated medications and advised to undergo sometimes unneeded or high-risk surgery by doctors who were raking in bribes. The CIR report has now birthed follow up articles in many California leading publications.

The Sacramento Bee in a series of related articles points out that a review of thousands of criminal court records by The Center for Investigative Reporting shows a system in which pay-to-play schemes trump patient care, particularly in unregulated treatments rejected by insurers and “disputed in obscure courts throughout the state.” Prosecutors are pursuing charges against more than 80 medical professionals who’ve handled more than 100,000 injured-worker cases, most of them originating in Southern California. They allege that the cases account for $1 billion in fraud.

And the Sacramento Bee story suggests that “nobody cares about policing health care for injured workers.” Thousands of unregulated medical providers can spurn legislated checks and balances on medical care in the only-in-California network of 24 workers’ compensation courts. Anyone can demand money – a process known as filing a medical lien – for unregulated medical treatments that include the use of questionable devices, pain creams, shockwave therapies and DNA tests. And in an overburdened system that favors settlements over trials, they often succeed”.

“We know there’s a problem,” said Christine Baker, director of the state Department of Industrial Relations, which administers workers’ compensation. Baker’s agency worked with lawmakers on a 2012 law that was meant to limit the filing of medical liens. It established a $150 fee required to demand payment in workers’ compensation courts. It also gave insurers new powers to deny money to providers that aren’t approved to treat injured workers.

Yet claims for unapproved care still are cropping up, Baker said. And the number of liens filed last year is even higher than it was when one of Baker’s advisers initially concluded that the system “rewards bad behavior.” Baker said her department has begun reviewing the medical providers who currently file the largest number of liens. The result: “We do note that many are (criminally) indicted.”

“We’re talking about a patient that has become a commodity,” said Don Marshall, chairman of the state’s Fraud Assessment Commission, which distributes funds to prosecutors who fight workers’ compensation fraud. “It’s become something to trade and sell on the open market for no other reason than to generate income.”

Workers who’ve been hurt on the job often are the last to find out that they have been exploited – if they find out at all.