Chiropractor, Lawyer Charged With Insurance Scam : Crime: The two are accused of setting up unneeded treatments and submitting inflated claims for a man’s injuries in an auto accident.

A chiropractor and a lawyer who has served as a reserve police officer and judge pro tem in the Culver City Municipal Court were arraigned Wednesday on charges that they presented fraudulently inflated injury claims in an auto accident case.

Bail was set at $100,000 each for the chiropractor, Dennis Singh, and attorney David M. Shaby II, who were arrested Tuesday.

Shaby’s father, contractor David M. Shaby Sr., borrowed the bail money and posted his son’s bond, telling Los Angeles Municipal Court Commissioner John Ladner on Wednesday that making monthly payments on the loan “doesn’t bother me.”

Singh’s attorney, Anthony Brooklier, said he expected his client to post bail by this morning. Prosecutors said Singh “has access to large amounts of cash,” including $250,000 in one bank account. About $6,000 in cash was found in his car when he was arrested, investigators said.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Mark C. Kim and Elizabeth Delgado said the case stems from an auto accident in the Culver City area last November in which a driver had to stop suddenly for a jaywalker and was rear-ended by another vehicle. The prosecutors said the man driving the car that was rear-ended sustained only minor injuries.

The man, who has not been identified, consulted the younger Shaby for representation in an insurance claim, and Shaby sent the man to Singh for medical treatment, the prosecutors said.

“Shaby, with the aid of Singh, submitted false medical bills, recommended unnecessary treatment and made false statements about injuries attributed to the auto accident to the United/Pacific Reliance Insurance Co. and made a claim for $15,000, which was the maximum amount of the insurance involved,” the district attorney’s office said.

United/Pacific is the insurer of the driver whose auto struck the car that had stopped for the jaywalker. That driver was not injured and was not involved in the alleged fraud, the prosecutors said.

Kim and Delgado said they learned of the purported scam when the driver being treated by Singh told the district attorney’s office that he suspected the defendants were attempting to defraud the insurance company.

They said that more than 45 tape recordings were made during the subsequent investigation, but they declined to say who was recorded or what the recorded conversations were about. They also declined to say what sort of injuries were listed in the claims sent to the insurance company.

The defendants each are charged with one count of grand theft and one count of filing a false or fraudulent insurance claim. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 9.

The district attorney’s office said the younger Shaby’s law offices are on Jefferson Boulevard in Culver City. He is well known in that community, having served as a judge pro tem on the Municipal Court there and as a reserve officer in the Culver City Police Department.

Kim said Shaby is not believed to have used his authority as a judge and reserve officer in the commission of the alleged scam.

His father is a successful Culver City building contractor and real estate developer.

Brooklier said Singh, who earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree at Brigham Young University before graduating from chiropractic school in California, is married and has four children.

Prosecutors said neither defendant is known to have been in trouble with the law before.