Law Enforcement

SACRAMENTO – Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today filed a $34 million lawsuit against television’s “Tax Lady Roni Deutch” for orchestrating a “heartless scheme” that swindled thousands of people facing serious and expensive tax collection problems with the IRS.

“Tax Lady Roni Deutch is engaged in a heartless scheme that swindled people with tax problems,” Brown said. “She promises to significantly reduce their IRS tax debts, but instead preys on their vulnerability, taking large up-front payments but providing little or no help in lowering their tax bills.”

Deutch manufactures credibility by boasting that her tax resolution law firm, which has annual revenues of at least $25 million, is the largest of its kind in the nation. She spends $3 million a year on advertising, much of it on late-night cable TV, and frequently offers tax advice on NBC’s Today Show, CNN, and CNBC.

Desperate debtors turn to Deutch based on her misleading ads that feature fictional testimonials claiming she secured large reductions in the featured clients’ federal tax debts.

For example, her ad entitled “It’s Your Turn” features three clients whom Deutch claims to have “saved” from having to pay thousands of dollars to the IRS. In fact, those clients still owe the IRS the full amount of their taxes, plus interest and penalties.

When potential clients call Deutch’s boiler room, sales agents employ high-pressure sales tactics plus a series of misrepresentations and false promises to persuade them to retain her firm. The sales agents claim Deutch’s success rate in dealing with the IRS is as high as 99 percent. But the percentage of clients whose tax bills Deutch actually reduces is a mere 10 percent.

Rather than cut clients’ debts, Deutch often escalates them. She places clients in an endless loop of requests for duplicate documents that increases her fees and, due to further delays in payments to the IRS, increases clients’ IRS fines and penalties.

One woman from Pico Rivera, who owed the IRS $13,000, turned to Deutch after seeing a TV ad. She paid Deutch a $1,900 retainer, but by the time the Deutch firm ended its representation, she owed the IRS hundreds of dollars more in interest and penalties, and the IRS had placed a levy against her Social Security benefits. Despite failing to take any effective action on her behalf, Deutch refused to refund the woman’s retainer by falsely billing her for time the firm did not spend on her case. Deutch regularly uses false billing statements to deny her clients’ refund requests.

Hundreds of clients have filed complaints with the Attorney General and other government agencies, describing Deutch’s failure to reduce their IRS debts as she advertised and her refusal to refund retainers of as much as $4,700.

Brown’s lawsuit says thousands of consumers in California and around the country have fallen victim to Deutch’s unlawful scam, losing millions of dollars that could have been used to pay their IRS tax liabilities. The lawsuit charges that Deutch operates a deceptive tax resolution scheme that employs “a bevy of false promises and misrepresentations.”

Brown’s action seeks to permanently prevent Deutch from engaging in such unfair business practices and false advertising, and force her to pay victims restitution of at least $33.9 million plus civil penalties.

Brown's lawsuit follows the consumer alert he issued on March 30, 2010, warning consumers to be wary about tax debt scams. It is also one of a series of actions he has taken to protect consumers who suffered during the financial crisis and resulting economic downturn, including his 2008 lawsuit against Countrywide Home Loans that resulted in an $8.68 billion settlement, as well as recent enforcement actions against scams in the foreclosure consultant, loan modification, and property tax reassessment industries.

LOS ANGELES – Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced today that accused Westside Rapist John Floyd Thomas, Jr., who is scheduled to appear in a Los Angeles courtroom today, was apprehended in pursuit of DNA evidence in the Grim Sleeper serial murder case.

Thomas is accused of murdering seven women in Los Angeles and is a suspect in as many as two dozen other murders.

“DNA analysis by the state lab provided the key that unlocked the mystery of the Westside Rapist’s murders of women over two decades,” Brown said. “A suspect is in custody today because our forensic scientists were able to link his DNA to multiple crime scenes.”

Starting in 1972, a killer preyed late at night on older women in the mid-Wilshire area on the west side of Los Angeles. He also struck in Inglewood and Lennox. After raping and strangling his victims to death, he left their faces covered with a blanket or pillow. Most of them were in their 60s, 70s or 80s.

A decade later, a similar skein of rape-murders occurred in Claremont, east of Los Angeles.

The killings stopped in 1989. For years, police were unable to solve any of the cases.

Twenty years later, frustrated by their inability to catch the Grim Sleeper, who was believed to have killed as many as 10 people in south Los Angeles, LAPD officers tried a new tack. In the fall of 2008, they fanned out across the city to collect DNA from 92 registered L.A. sex offenders whose DNA was not already in the state databank.

Thomas was one of them. He had been convicted of a sexual assault in 1978 in which he snapped a 78-year-old woman’s ankle during an attack in Pasadena. She survived, a neighbor identified a license plate, and Thomas served five years in prison.

In the 2008 dragnet, Police doggedly pursued Thomas and the other offenders. Finally, Thomas agreed to come in for testing. Dressed for work as an insurance adjuster in slacks and a long-sleeved red dress shirt, Thomas reported to the LAPD Southwest Community station, where a DNA sample was taken from the inside of his cheek.

In March 2009, officials at the Department of Justice forensics lab that maintains the state DNA database notified Los Angeles detectives there was a DNA match between Thomas and unsolved murders – but not the Grim Sleeper cases police had set out to solve.

Thomas’ DNA matched genetic evidence found at the scene of a 1972 homicide of a 68-year-old woman in the mid-Wilshire area, one of the first of the Westside Rapist cases. His DNA was also linked to DNA collected at other Westside Rapist slayings.

Thomas, 74, is currently being held without bail in Los Angeles County Jail on seven counts of murder. He is scheduled to appear today in Department 30 on the fifth floor of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles to set a date for his preliminary hearing.

Ultimately, the state DNA lab also played a critical role in the Grim Sleeper case. At the behest of the Los Angeles Police Department in 2008 and 2010, the lab searched its DNA databank for family members of the suspect. One convicted felon’s genetic blueprint showed he was almost certainly the suspect’s son. After further investigation, police on July 7 of this year arrested Lonnie David Franklin Jr. and charged him with multiple counts of murder in that case.

Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. and Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley have agreed to coordinate their investigations into the recent allegations of official wrongdoing in Bell, California.

The District Attorney will focus on possible criminal activity, while the Attorney General will focus on possible civil wrongdoing and obtaining relief for the taxpayers.

"What happened in Bell is a travesty, and I intend to get to the bottom of it and to get all the relief that the law allows,' Brown said.

"The Los Angeles District Attorney's office has a decades-long record of aggressively pursuing public corruption. We will do so in this case,' Cooley said.

SACRAMENTO – Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced today that special agents with the state Department of Justice, working closely with the U.S. Attorney’s office, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the state Board of Equalization, have charged 15 individuals with tobacco smuggling and tax evasion schemes that diverted some $34 million from state and county health care programs and the state’s general fund.

The three-year investigation has uncovered “rampant fraud” among tobacco distributors with estimated tax losses totaling more than $80 million, including today’s case. More than $20 million in tobacco, property and cash has been seized.

“This is rampant fraud where fake invoices are used to disguise contraband tobacco, and often get passed from distributor to wholesaler to the mom-and-pop store,” said Brown. “We’re following every phony paper trail to ensure that the state collects every penny it’s owed in tobacco product taxes.”

The 15 individuals were arrested last week and released on bonds ranging from $50,000 to $250,000. The charges, which include mail fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud and trafficking in contraband tobacco, were filed in Sacramento and Los Angeles U.S. District Courts. The defendants charged in Los Angeles have been arraigned there, and the Sacramento defendants will be arraigned later this month.

The taxes evaded in these cases were for “other tobacco products,” such as cigars, chewing tobacco and leaf tobacco.

Under California law, distributors of these “other tobacco products” are required to collect an excise tax of more than 45% from the wholesaler and submit monthly reports to the Board of Equalization. To evade these taxes, distributors set up their businesses in Nevada or Arizona and report that they are exporting the tobacco and thus owe no excise taxes. The products are then smuggled into California, where actual sales are concealed by the use of shell companies to receive the products, false documents that understate the amount of tobacco, and the use of untraceable cash sales to wholesalers.

“This investigation has exposed systematic and widespread tax evasion in the distribution of tobacco products in California,” said U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner. “Participants in that industry who might be tempted to short-change the State of California should take note of the indictments announced today, and should understand that our investigations are not over.”

In 2008, the task force issued a search warrant against Ideal Tobacco, a large Nevada distributor. Using information seized from Ideal Tobacco, agents tracked down Ideal’s largest customers who were buying tobacco from Ideal and selling it in California, but failing to pay state’s tobacco tax.

The individuals and charges include:

• Galiom Mansour, president and CEO, and Naeim Hanno, CFO, of South Bay Wholesale, Inc. in Carson, are charged with 39 counts of mail fraud. Estimated losses to the state are $519,000 in unpaid tobacco products tax.
• Adib Sirope and Rimoun Mansour, partners in Pay-Less Wholesale in North Hollywood, are charged with 39 counts of mail fraud. Estimated losses to the state are $2.5 million in unpaid tobacco products tax.
• Atif Henan, Atef Shehata, Samy Girgis and Soheir Girgis, partners in Classic Wholesale (and later House of Tobacco) in Los Angeles, are charged with 17 counts of mail fraud. Estimated losses to the state are $1.5 million in unpaid tobacco products tax.
• Jack Haroun, president and CEO of Wholesale Palace in Burbank, is charged with 37 counts of mail fraud. Estimated losses to the state are $554,000 in unpaid tobacco products tax.
• Mohammed Halaweh, using the names CTC Distribution and T&T Tobacco for unlicensed companies in Los Angeles, is charged with 13 counts of mail fraud and eight counts of trafficking in contraband tobacco. Estimated losses to the state are $5.3 million in unpaid tobacco products tax.
• Mehdi Mohammed Humkar, using the name M&D Tobacco for an unlicensed company in Los Angeles, is charged with 15 counts of mail fraud and seven counts of trafficking in contraband tobacco. Estimated losses to the state are $528,000 in unpaid tobacco products tax.
• Rajnish Makkad, Charanjit Singh, and Amrit Singh, principals in Arctic Inc., a Nevada corporation not licensed to distribute OTP, and IIG Inc. in Los Angeles, are charged with 19 counts of mail fraud and 16 counts of trafficking in contraband tobacco. Estimated losses to the state are $13.8 million in unpaid tobacco products tax.
• Abdurrahman Yousuf, owner and operator of A to Z Cash and Carry in Los Angeles, is charged with 17 counts of mail fraud and 13 counts of trafficking in contraband tobacco. Estimated losses to the state are $2.3 million in unpaid tobacco products tax.

While sentencing varies, the maximum penalty for each count of mail fraud is 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a three-year term of supervised release. The maximum penalty for each count of trafficking in contraband tobacco and each count of conspiracy is five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a three-year term of supervised release.

LOS ANGELES -- Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. subpoenaed personal financial records of present and former officials involved in the City of Bell salary scandal today and ordered them to appear for depositions to be taken under oath within two weeks.

Brown also announced that his office has set up a toll-free telephone hotline for citizens to report allegations of possible illegal election conduct by Bell officials.

“My office has received several reports from residents of Bell indicating that city officials encouraged them to fill out absentee ballots and then collected the ballots,” Brown said. “We have seen similar reports in the Los Angeles Times. If these allegations are true, this could be a serious violation of state law.”

California law requires that absentee ballots must be mailed or brought to a polling place by the voter unless the voter is disabled or ill.

In the case of Bell, it appears as though improper procedures may have been followed by public officials in the very election that allowed the city to give out these outrageous salaries. If so, there may be grounds to seek additional civil or even criminal penalties.

“When city employees of a tiny suburb of L.A. make as much as or nearly double the salary of the President of the United States, things are out of control,” Brown said.

Present or former residents of Bell who had absentee ballots picked up by city officials should call the attorney general’s toll-free hotline, (866) 625-4400. Brown and his staff would also like to hear any information regarding conflicts of interest or self-dealing by Bell officials.

“It’s possible that some people who were victimized by Bell officials may no longer live in Bell, and the only way we have to find these people is for them to call us,” Brown explained.

Earlier today, Brown subpoenaed the testimony of past and present Bell officials and city council members. A team of state lawyers will depose these officials under oath on August 19 and 20. Before then, the officials are required to produce records related to pay and pension benefits, federal and state income tax returns, gifts received by or given to city officials, bank accounts and outside business interests. As part of his expanded investigation, Brown also issued a supplemental subpoena, demanding the release of records involving the city’s former law firm.

Brown’s investigation is aimed at determining whether criminal or civil action should be taken against Bell officials and others. He launched the investigation on July 22 following newspaper reports that Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo was paid $787,637 a year, Police Chief Randy Adams was paid $457,000, and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia was paid $376,288. The three have since resigned.

Four of five Bell city council members received nearly $100,000 a year each, but after vocal citizen protests, they reduced their annual stipends to $8,000.

On July 26, Brown issued subpoenas to the City of Bell for hundreds of employment, salary and contract records. Hundreds of pages of documents have been turned over, and Brown said he expects additional documents to be produced today and even more to be handed over in response to the new subpoenas.

Bell is one of a cluster of working class cities in southeast Los Angeles County with a high proportion of low-income residents. Its population was 36,624 in 2000.

In conjunction with the Bell investigation, Brown is also reviewing whether excessive salaries and pension benefits are being paid by local jurisdictions around the state.

UKIAH – Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced the arrests of six nursing home employees who physically abused elderly residents by coating them in an ointment cream to play a “cruel and shocking prank” against their co-workers.

The former Valley View Skilled Nursing Facility employees applied the ointment cream to seven elderly residents, head to foot, to make them “slippery” for employees working the next shift. All of the abused patients suffered from dementia and were unable to object to their treatment. Upon discovery of the incident, the six individuals were fired.

“As part of a cruel and shocking prank, these caregivers abused defenseless elders,” Brown said. “This is despicable behavior by people placed in a position of trust.”

Jenny Bido, 26, Christina Guerrero (aka Boyd), 30, Jared Buckley, 29, Jennifer Burton, 33, Kathleen Phillips, 23, and Monica Smith, 51, are being charged with one misdemeanor count each of injury to elder or dependent adult; battery committed on elder or a dependent adult; conspiracy; and battery committed while on hospital property. Bail has been set for each individual at $7,500.

After an investigation by agents from Brown’s Bureau of Elder Abuse, the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office filed criminal complaints last week against the six individuals.

“Mendocino County is home to a growing elder population,” said District Attorney Meredith J. Lintott. “We’re committed to keeping that population safe and to prosecuting those who take advantage of our elders.”

Brown’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse protects patients from physical and financial abuse and neglect in homecare, as well as in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. The bureau also investigates and prosecutes nursing home operators and health care providers who cheat taxpayers out of millions of dollars each year and divert scarce health care resources from the needy.

Last year, the bureau secured convictions in 49 criminal cases of elder abuse, with penalties, fines and restitution orders totaling nearly $500,000.

To report cases of elder abuse, contact the Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse toll-free hotline at 1-800-722-0432 or visit: http//ag.ca.gov/bmfea/reporting.php.

SACRAMENTO — Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced that his office has brought formal charges against a father and son who promised to recover unclaimed funds for dozens of citizens and then “surreptitiously stole” more than $1.6 million from them, using forged documents and fictitious mailing addresses.

“This larcenous pair scoured the Controller’s database of individuals with unclaimed property, contacted many of them, and promised to help recover their assets,” Brown said. “Instead, employing forgery and fraud, they surreptitiously stole more than $1.6 million.”

Thomas Rodine, 56, of Carmichael and Dustin Rodine, 28, of Citrus Heights were arraigned today, following their arrest on July 23. Each is charged with three counts of embezzlement and one count of submitting fraudulent claims to the state Controller. Both face a maximum of seven years, six months in prison. To date, victims have been repaid more than $700,000 and full restitution is expected.

Agents in Brown’s Special Crimes Unit initiated an investigation into the father and son duo at the request of Controller John Chiang in January, after the Controller’s internal audit identified fraud.

Brown’s investigation found that from 2007 to 2009, Thomas and Dustin Rodine used their Carmichael-based asset and heir location business, Rodco & Associates, to locate and solicit individuals with assets in the Controller’s unclaimed property fund.

The scheme worked like this: After claimants agreed to have Rodco & Associates seek to recover their funds, the Rodines forged documents to reroute the recovered assets to a network of post office boxes they controlled. The Rodines also forged claim documents to collect funds that were never disclosed to claimants. From the pool of money they collected, the Rodines withheld unauthorized fees and claims totaling $1.675 million.

The thefts ranged from just over $100 to more than $300,000 and involved funds from personal bank accounts, foundation trusts, stocks and other assets in the Controller’s unclaimed property fund. Investigators located victims in cities throughout California, including Alpine, Chico, Los Angeles, Nevada City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, Sonoma and a number of other cities.

After the initial internal audit by the Controller, payment of all claims initiated by Rodco & Associates was halted.

“My office has worked hard to make it easier for Californians to find and claim their lost property, whether it is cash, stocks, valuable jewelry or family photos and mementos that simply are irreplaceable,” said Controller John Chiang. “Californians need to know that they can claim their property directly from my office for free. I encourage them to do so.”

Following execution of the search warrant, Rodco & Associates established a trust account to repay defrauded claimants. To date, the company has repaid more than $700,000 and authorities expect full restitution for defrauded victims.

The State of California is currently in possession of more than $5.7 billion in unclaimed property belonging to some 11.6 million individuals and organizations.

This property is acquired through California’s Unclaimed Property Law, which requires “holders” such as corporations, business associations, financial institutions, and insurance companies to report annually and deliver property to the Controller after there has been no customer contact for three years. Often, the owner forgets the account exists, moves and does not leave a forwarding address or the forwarding order expires. In some cases, the owner dies, and the heirs have no knowledge of the property.

The Controller allows claimants to recover property directly, without the use of so-called “asset locators” or other third parties. To find out if you have unclaimed property and for instructions on how to claim it, visit: www.ClaimIt.ca.gov.

A copy of the complaint, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, is attached.

SACRAMENTO - Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. said today that a jury’s verdict of first-degree murder this week in a 1988 homicide in Redding is a powerful example of how DNA analysis conducted every day by state laboratories can “stop criminals from getting away with murder.”

“The Harper conviction, like the Grim Sleeper arrest earlier this month, is further evidence that DNA is becoming an increasingly important factor in fighting violent crime,” Brown said. “Work being done every day in our labs stops criminals from getting away with murder.”

Brian Harper, 40, was convicted Tuesday afternoon in a Redding court room for the 1988 murder of Judith Hasselstrom, 43, a Shasta County woman whose body was found in a local park. Investigators determined she had been strangled.

After Hasselstrom’s murder 22 years ago, blood was found on bamboo stalks that covered her body, but there was no way then to submit DNA from the blood for forensic analysis. DNA technology had yet to be developed for use in criminal investigations, but in 2002, investigators were able to test that blood sample to create a DNA profile of an unknown suspect in Hasselstrom’s murder. No suspects were identified, however, and for years, the evidence remained stored in the Redding Police Department’s “cold case” locker.

Harper’s DNA was collected after he was convicted of a 2007 bank robbery. Although Harper had never been a subject of the murder investigation, his DNA was tested and found to match the DNA found at the 1988 murder scene. State forensic scientists were also able to match two palm prints found on the bamboo stalks to Harper’s prints. Harper initially denied knowledge of Hasslestrom’s murder, but eventually admitted to killing her.

It was Redding’s first cold case homicide arrest involving a DNA hit. The Shasta County jury trial lasted three weeks and came back with its first-degree murder verdict after several days of deliberations. Harper is scheduled to be sentenced on September 10. He faces 25 years to life in prison.

Like the “Grim Sleeper,” the Harper case is an important example of how every day Brown’s forensic labs use DNA to solve violent crimes. Harper’s conviction illustrates the state’s DNA program is fulfilling its promise to make Californians safer and to bring criminals to justice. Each day, an average of nine “hits” are made in which forensic scientists match crime scene DNA to that of a suspect in the state database of 1.5 million offenders and arrestees.

LOS ANGELES – Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today subpoenaed hundreds of employment, salary, and contract records from the City of Bell and its top officials as part of an investigation to determine whether civil or criminal action should be taken against city leaders whose secretive salaries in one case rose to almost $800,000 a year.

Brown told a news conference at his downtown Los Angeles state office today that he was making public the issuance of the subpoenas both to assure the residents of Bell and the people of California that state government is taking fast, effective action to crack down on any possible wrongdoing, and also to warn officials in other California cities that no public officials will be allowed to carry out similar schemes.

“These outrageous pay practices are an insult to the hard-working people of Bell and have provoked righteous indignation in California and even across the country,” Brown said. “I’m determined to get to the bottom of these exorbitant payouts and protect the state’s pension system against such abuses; today’s subpoenas are an important step in that process.”

Brown gave city officials an expedited schedule to turn over documents to state investigators, demanding within 48 hours production of the critically important employment contracts.

Brown said his department's investigation is looking at all possible violations of law by Bell officials, including civil and criminal sanctions. Brown launched his state probe after The Los Angeles Times revealed the $787,637 salary of City Manager Robert Rizzo and found that the Bell police chief was making 50 percent more than the police chief of Los Angeles.

The newspaper reported that Rizzo’s salary made him possibly the highest-paid city manager in the country. Police Chief Randy Adams was paid $457,000 a year, and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia was paid $376,288. The three resigned on Friday.

Four Bell city council members, including the mayor, are paid nearly $100,000 for their part-time jobs. In 2005, a state law limited salaries for city council members in general law cities. The newspaper reported that in the same year, Bell engineered a special election to convert to a charter city, the only item on the ballot that year. Since then, council members’ salaries have increased dramatically.

Bell, in southeast Los Angeles County, according to the 2000 census, has a population of 36,624 that includes a high percentage of low-income residents. Hundreds of citizens marched through city streets yesterday to demand the resignation of the mayor and other council members.

Brown’s probe will examine whether any illegality, self-dealing, or other improper activity occurred in Bell, and whether any changes in California law are necessary to prevent similar abuses in the future.

“We will conduct a prompt and thorough investigation into how these unprecedented salaries were awarded to public servants,” Brown said.

Brown said his office will also review salaries in other local jurisdictions around the state to determine whether similar abuses might be occurring.

The overall investigation is being conducted jointly with CalPERS, the state public employee pension fund, which has responsibility for administering the state pension system.

Brown's subpoena is attached.

LOS ANGELES – Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced that his office is seeking additional victims of a former home health care worker, Antoinette Thomas, 31, of Los Angeles County, who has been charged with “stealing more than $7,000” over a period of two weeks from an elderly woman in her care.

“In just a few days, Thomas stole more than $7,000 from her elderly client, racking up huge credit card bills and forging personal checks,” Brown said. “Other elders who have been exploited by this woman should step forward so she can be held fully accountable.”

Thomas is being held at Lynwood Jail, and bail has been set at $100,000. Thomas faces one count each of grand theft, theft from elder or dependent adult by a caretaker, identity theft, forgery, and second-degree commercial burglary. She also faces an unrelated drug charge. If convicted of the theft charges, Thomas faces up to five years in prison.

In December 2009, agents from Brown’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse received a complaint against Thomas, who was a former employee of Homewatch CareGivers.

Brown’s office began an investigation and learned that, in the two weeks that Thomas worked for the 87-year-old victim, she had stolen cash and credit cards that she used to purchase home furnishings, gas, clothing and cosmetics. She used one of the victim’s credit cards on a $3,400 shopping spree in a furniture store and another to pay the charges on her cell phone. Thomas wrote a check to herself and forged her client’s signature. In total, Thomas stole more than $7,000. Investigators believe there are other victims.

Brown’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse protects patients from physical and financial abuse and neglect in homecare, as well as in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. The bureau also investigates and prosecutes nursing home operators and health care providers who cheat taxpayers out of millions of dollars each year, diverting scarce health care resources from the needy.

Last year, Brown’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse secured convictions in 49 criminal cases of elder abuse with penalties, fines and restitution orders totaling nearly $500,000 in these cases.

To report information about Thomas or to report another case of elder abuse, contact the Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse toll-free hotline at 1-800-722-0432 or visit: http//ag.ca.gov/bmfea/reporting.php.

A copy of the Thomas complaint, filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, is attached. The Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse will prosecute the case against Thomas.