Cases Involve More Than $26 Million in Fraudulent Medicare Claims

Twenty defendants, most of them residing in the Los Angeles area, have been charged in seven separate cases with participating in Medicare fraud schemes that resulted in over $26 million in fraudulent bills to the Medicare program.
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Federal Prison Sentence to Run Consecutively to 16-Year State Prison Term

An Ecuadorian citizen who lived in Los Angeles was sentenced today to 25 years in federal prison for producing and possessing child pornography, a sentence that will run consecutively to a 16-year term the defendant received in state court for sexually abusing a young girl.
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A Fontana woman has been sentenced to one year in federal prison after pleading guilty in a scheme in which she embezzled nearly a quarter million dollars from a Los Angeles non-profit that provides shelter to homeless women and children.

Barbara Alvarado, 32, was sentenced Monday afternoon by United States District Judge Christina A. Snyder in Los Angeles. In addition to the 12-month prison term, Judge Snyder ordered Alvarado to serve three years of supervised release, which will include one year of home detention.
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Five Members Of Avenues Street Gang Charged In Murder Of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy

RICO Case alleges Mexican Mafia-led Attempts to Reorganize Avenues after 2008 Federal Indictment Dismantled Gang’s Lucrative Drew Street Clique
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The former president of Service Employees International Union, Local 660, has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges in a scheme that defrauded a non-profit organization formed by another labor leader through the use of bogus consulting contracts.

In a plea agreement filed this afternoon in United States District Court in Los Angeles, Alejandro Stephens, 65, a resident of the Koreatown District of Los Angeles, agreed to plead guilty to two counts of mail fraud and one count of filing a false federal income tax return.

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Five people related to an extended Guatemalan family were sentenced to federal prison late yesterday, all receiving multi-decade sentences for their roles in an international sex trafficking ring that lured young Guatemalan women and girls into the Los Angeles area and forced them into prostitution.

“In this disturbing case, the defendants lured young, uneducated and impoverished women and girls to the United States, where they were forced to work as prostitutes in terrifying conditions,” said United States Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien. “There were at least 10 victims who were forced into becoming prostitutes under a variety of threats, as well as actual physical attacks that included rapes.”
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The former Armenian Consul in Los Angeles and a Beverly Hills immigration attorney are among five people arrested last night and this morning on federal criminal charges that allege they obtained and sold to illegal aliens documents called “letters of refusal,” which allowed those illegal aliens to avoid deportation.

Issued by embassies and consulates, a letter of refusal states that a country will not issue a travel document for a particular individual, essentially blocking that person’s deportation to that nation. According to the criminal charges that led to this week’s arrests, the five defendants sold official letters of refusal from the Armenian consulate for as much as $35,000. Those letters prevented the removal of the Armenian nationals to Armenia. The investigation revealed that many of those who purchased the letters were Armenian nationals facing deportation after being convicted in the United States of felony offenses.
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Federal and State authorities this morning arrested 20 defendants accused of being part of ring that defrauded Medi-Cal out of nearly $4.6 million by using unlicensed individuals to provide in-home care to scores of disabled patients, many of them children with cerebral palsy or developmental disabilities.

The 20 defendants arrested this morning are among 42 defendants named in a 41-count indictment that was returned by a federal grand jury on June 25. The indictment is part of an investigation called Operation License Integrity, a two-year investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and the Office of the California Attorney General-Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse. The indictment alleges that the 42 defendants and two others, one of whom has already pleaded guilty to health care fraud charges, conspired to bill Medi-Cal nearly $4.6 million for in-home licensed nursing services that were actually provided by unlicensed individuals. Read the rest of this entry »

In the nation’s largest-ever gang investigation and prosecution, a law enforcement task force this morning arrested an additional 11 defendants named in federal charges that are linked to the Hawaiian Gardens gang that was previously the subject of a sweeping racketeering indictment. The 11 defendants arrested today are among 24 people named in a federal narcotics-trafficking indictment that outlines a drug pipeline to and from members of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang.

In related developments across four Southern California counties today, another nine defendants were arrested and are expected to be charged in state court. Authorities also seized eight firearms, more than 400 rounds of ammunition, one pound of methamphetamine and a ballistic vest. Seven additional defendants charged in federal court were recently taken into custody. Read the rest of this entry »