More Arrests Expected in Crash Probe : Insurance fraud: Officials say hundreds of car-truck collisions may have been deliberately caused in the last year.

State and local investigators said Wednesday they expect to arrest 70 more suspects in insurance scams they now believe caused hundreds of deliberate collisions with tractor-trailer trucks on Los Angeles freeways during the last year.

In addition, files related to the crashes have been seized from three lawyers’ offices, the state attorney general’s office said. A fourth lawyer is under investigation by the California Highway Patrol for participation in an allegedly setup crash on the Golden State Freeway in Sun Valley on June 17, in which an auto passenger was killed.

At a Sun Valley tow yard, state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren praised the continuing multi-agency investigation as an example of “good old-fashioned police work.” So far, 20 people have been arrested.

The three-month investigation uncovered a group of about half a dozen apparently unrelated fraud rings operating on freeways all over the metropolitan area, said Rich Ward, an attorney general’s investigator. In each case, the scenario was the same: a car pulled in front of a tractor-trailer truck, then a second vehicle swerved in front of that car and braked, causing the first car and the truck to collide.

After their arrests, some of the passengers said they were recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America, recruited off the streets of Los Angeles for $100 or less. Investigators said the organizers hoped to gain thousands of dollars from each accident in injury and damage settlements.

Auto insurance fraud is common, particularly in Southern California. A recent study by the Western Insurance Industry Service estimated that up to 25% of the 570,000 accidents it surveyed were staged. On Wednesday, Highway Patrol Assistant Chief Keith L. Miller said the Los Angeles area accounted for more than half the 357 crash fraud investigations in the state last year.

But in the past, the majority of those fake accidents have involved cars, not trucks, and many existed only on paper, or were staged on city streets, not freeways.

On Wednesday, against a backdrop of twisted trucks and crumpled cars that he said were involved in such collisions, Lungren called the crashes “dangerous and frightening.” Investigators have said they believe trucks are being targeted because they carry higher liability insurance policies and have a more difficult time stopping.

“We’re talking about more than ripping off insurance companies, as bad as that seems,” he said. “We’re talking about recklessly endangering the lives of innocent Californians.”

Lungren said he hoped the investigation would ultimately snare any attorneys and doctors who may have helped arrange the accidents or aided the filing of claims against insurance companies. But he was somewhat pessimistic about the prospects for arresting such professionals, based on his experience with similar fraud rings.

“What we have to show is knowing participation, and that is very hard to prove,” he said.

The attorney general’s office became involved in the investigation at its inception in April because of a state drug informant who ultimately supplied information about three of the alleged rings. A fourth and fifth ring, which investigators believe were linked, were discovered after the June wreck in which 29-year-old Jose Luis Lopez Perez of El Salvador was killed.

Lungren said the 70 anticipated arrests include suspects from those rings and “at least one or two others.”

By piecing together information obtained from interviews with suspects and searches of their apartments, the Highway Patrol found evidence of 67 deliberate collisions with trucks since Jan. 2, Miller said. Those accidents occurred on virtually every Los Angeles-area traffic artery, from the Santa Monica Freeway to the Ventura Freeway and from the Long Beach Freeway to the Pasadena Freeway.

Highway Patrol investigator Susan Mustaffa said she believes that “hundreds more” staged crashes took place this year alone, although they have not yet been confirmed. Three other fatalities are being investigated as possible fake accidents, she said, including one in which two passengers burned to death in a March crash near Santa Fe Springs.