Lawyer Guilty of Faking Car Crashes to Get Insurance : Conspiracy: The Costa Mesa attorney and his assistant are convicted of running a ring that staged collisions and collected on phony claims.

Marking the county’s first prosecution of an attorney on auto insurance fraud, a Costa Mesa lawyer and his assistant were found guilty Tuesday of running a ring that staged traffic accidents and collecting about $250,000 in fake insurance claims.

A Superior Court jury deliberated two weeks before finding attorney Thomas F. Mullen, 45, of Costa Mesa guilty of nine counts of conspiracy to commit fraud, grand theft and attempted grand theft.

With the felony convictions, the California Bar Assn. can temporarily suspend Mullen’s license to practice law in the state pending his appeal.

Jurors acquitted Mullen on one count of grand theft and deadlocked on two other similar counts. The jury also convicted his co-defendant, Jose Jesus Toribio, 37, of Santa Ana, on all 12 counts he faced.

Attorneys for the defendants said Tuesday that they were disappointed with the guilty verdict but conceded that the evidence against their clients was almost insurmountable.

“There was quite a bit of evidence--circumstantial evidence--against my client going to trial,” said Douglas J. Myers, Toribio’s lawyer. “I’m not surprised that the jury reached the verdict that they did.”

Mullen’s attorney, Salvatore Ciulla, added: “It was a difficult case (to defend) because there was so much evidence against (Toribio), and it’s always hard to say how much of that evidence will spill over” to Mullen.

Both attorneys said they will file an appeal.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth O. Chinn said Mullen became the first personal injury lawyer prosecuted in Orange County for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud because such charges are difficult to prove against an attorney.

During the trial, Ciulla told jurors that Mullen might have been hoodwinked by Toribio into paying people who came to the office reporting traffic accidents without knowing that those accidents had been faked. And if Toribio were involved in setting up bogus accidents and using the law practice’s name to pay for them, said Ciulla, Mullen was never aware of it.

“I suspect that there are many attorneys out there who would make similar claims--that they did not know what was going on in their offices--if evidence was brought to them,” Chinn said Tuesday. “I would hope that after this verdict, those attorneys would take a very close look at what’s going on in their offices because who knows, we may be knocking on their doors.”

Mullen and Toribio were among a dozen people arrested in January, 1991, following an extensive two-year investigation headed by the California Highway Patrol.

Authorities alleged that between 1987 and 1989 the two men masterminded a ring that staged more than 100 accidents and collected about $1 million in insurance money from those collisions.

Among those arrested in January, 1991, was Toribio’s wife, Adriana Fernandez, who pleaded guilty to grand theft charges in exchange for testimony against the defendants and a lighter prison sentence.

Fernandez, 39, testified against the two men during the preliminary hearing. But she did not testify at the trial, invoking her marital privilege to avoid testifying against her husband.

Prosecutors, however, read the transcript of her preliminary testimony in court during the trial.

Fernandez testified during the preliminary hearing that in 1987 Toribio sent clients who reportedly had been in traffic accidents to her therapy clinic in Santa Ana. Toribio had asked her to bill the law firm at least $3,500 per client even if they did not receive physical therapy, she testified, adding that most of the clients did not show up for treatment.

In a taped interview with a CHP investigator after his arrest, Toribio said he and Mullen shared a “50-50 partnership” in Mullen’s personal injury practice, according to court documents. Toribio also told the investigator he would recruit people who were involved in accidents to bring their cases to Mullen, the Highway Patrol investigator testified at the trial.

Mullen is free on bail while Toribio is in custody in Orange County Jail in lieu of $125,000 bail. Both men are scheduled to return to court on June 19 for formal sentencing.