Lawyer Held as Planner of Crash Frauds : Investigation: Gary P. Miller is among 26 people newly charged in connection with staged accidents, including a truck wreck in which a man died.

An attorney considered the mastermind of an alleged insurance fraud ring suspected of setting up at least four wrecks with large trucks on the Golden State Freeway was arrested at his Encino home early Friday and charged with murder.

The arrest of Gary P. Miller, 44, came four months after Jose Luis Lopez Perez, 29, a participant in one of the crashes, was killed when a car-carrier overturned near Sun Valley and crushed the back seat of the car in which he was riding.

The ring was one of several such operations that investigators blame for hundreds of setup wrecks with big trucks during the past year. The alleged scams relied on organizers who recruited recent immigrants to ride in cars that swerved in front of tractor-trailer trucks and stopped, causing rear-end collisions.

Miller, whose law office is on Wilshire Boulevard near Beverly Hills, was one of 26 additional people allegedly associated with the ring who were indicted by the grand jury this week, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner announced Friday. Of the 26, only Miller and alleged wreck recruiter Filemon Santiago, 23, have been charged with murder. The remainder have been charged with counts of insurance fraud and conspiracy.

The case will be joined in Superior Court with that of the driver in the fatal June 17 wreck--20-year-old Jorge Sanchez--and the two surviving passengers, all of whom were charged with murder. The new case also includes the car’s owner, Oscar Portillo, who was charged with insurance fraud and who helped lead investigators to the alleged recruiter, Santiago.

As investigators began peeling off the layers of the ring, all evidence began to point to Miller, Reiner said.

“Miller, it turns out, was the rotten core,” Reiner said.

Reiner characterized Miller’s arrest as “the first time we’ve been able to trace a staged accident back to an attorney.”

However, last February, Reiner filed felony charges against two attorneys believed to be involved in a ring that offered seminars on how to set up crashes and then file medical insurance claims.

In addition to the four truck crashes, Miller has been linked to a freeway crash with a car, several other wrecks on streets, and one fake accident that occurred only on paper, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Barry Thorpe. Miller’s involvement in the ring may have dated back to summer, 1990, Thorpe said.

Investigators said Santiago was being paid from $500 to $1,000 by Miller for each phony accident he brought to the lawyer. After the fatal crash, Thorpe said, there is evidence that one of Miller’s employees visited Lopez Perez’s widow and offered to file a wrongful death suit against the driver of the car-carrier truck.

During the investigation, California Highway Patrol investigators served a search warrant at Miller’s law office. Reiner said that soon after that July 17 search, the attorney approached an insurance adjuster asking if he could “pull some strings” in the district attorney’s office.

“Instead of pulling strings, the adjuster was wired for sound by investigators and met with Miller to talk it over,” Reiner said.

Although luring large trucks into rear-end collisions is considered a particularly desperate and dangerous escalation, similar “swoop-and-squat” accidents are relatively common. Earlier this year, Reiner estimated that auto insurance fraud in Los Angeles County was eating up half the $4 billion paid by consumers in annual premiums, although state insurance experts say that the percentage may be lower.

Yet during the truck crash investigations, state and local insurance investigators have repeatedly said that tracing the accidents to the attorneys and doctors who usually are at least accomplices, and sometimes the masterminds, is particularly difficult. On Friday, private attorney Scott Koppel of Long Beach--who specializes in representing insurance companies in auto fraud cases--said he recognized Miller’s name from several cases handled by his office, but that Miller was “not a major player” in insurance fraud.

“He’s not one of the major players that I know of anyway,” Koppel said. “But in the overall scheme of things, this freeway sudden-stop thing was a small piece too.”

The California Bar Assn. reported that Miller--who passed the state Bar in 1977--had no record of public discipline.

Reiner, however, described Miller as “very active” when asked whether he had handled other accidents suspected of being frauds.