Los Angeles County’s district attorney has opened an investigation into claims of fraud within the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.
Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said Wednesday his office has started a wide-ranging probe into claims that plaintiffs made up stories of abuse in order to sue the county, which agreed to the historic $4-billion sex abuse settlement this spring.
The announcement follows Times investigations that found nine people who said they were paid small amounts of cash by recruiters to sue the county for sex abuse in juvenile halls. Four of them said they fabricated the claims.
“They looked at this opportunity to compensate these true victims of sex abuse as an opportunity to personally profit and engage in some of the most greedy and heinous conduct,” Hochman said at a news conference Wednesday morning in the Hall of Justice downtown. “We are going to aggressively go after them.”
All nine plaintiffs had their cases filed by Downtown LA Law Group, a personal injury firm that represents roughly 2,700 people in the county settlement. The firm has denied wrongdoing. The Times could not reach the recruiters who made the alleged payments to plaintiffs for comment.
Hochman indicated his investigation, still in its early stages, showed this was just a small fraction of the “significant number of fraudsters involved in these settlement claims.”
Hochman emphasized the inquiry would focus on those higher up the chain — lawyers, recruiters and medical...
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