One day after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved an $828 million settlement with 414 plaintiffs claiming they were victims of childhood sexual abuse in probation camps, attorneys in the case Wednesday called for more investigation into allegations that some plaintiffs in a separate settlement were paid to make false claims.
Attorney Courtney Thom, a former Orange County prosecutor of sexual assault cases, said even before the Los Angeles Times broke a story about some plaintiffs allegedly being paid to make false claims to get payouts under a state law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse, her firm was raising red flags about the fraud.
“This is plain fraud. For months, if not years before the LA Times exposed this story of false claims paid out by the county, we called out these claims openly numerous times in court,” Thom said. “And when the Board of Supervisors was confronted with this scandal publicly their response was to attack the victims. … Why did the county do no due diligence to investigate those claims? This isn’t normal. And we’ve never seen it. This is fraud and corruption on the highest level, and it is a stain on our profession.”
Thom said her firm deposed “dozens of former and current probation officials. … The county deposed no one. … We exposed the fact the county knew about the sexual abuse of our clients and did nothing. … They just passed the trash and moved the abuser and did nothing. … It...
Jerusalem District Police and the National Insurance Institute (NII) have uncovered what they describe as a large-scale fraud scheme involving tens of millions of shekels in false claims for “disa...