9th Defendant Convicted in Insurance Fraud

A woman who pleaded no contest Friday to conspiracy to commit insurance fraud became the ninth defendant to be convicted in a fraud ring that allegedly set up crashes with large trucks on the Golden State Freeway.

Reina Ruth Castillo, appearing in Los Angeles Superior Court, is one of 30 defendants indicted in October, 1992, who were associated with the fraud ring, Deputy Dist. Atty. Max Huntsman said. Castillo was an insurance claimant in a “paper accident,” he said.

“It was an accident that never happened,” Huntsman said. The phony claim was filed by attorney Gary P. Miller, who is considered the mastermind of the ring, prosecutors said.

Miller and three other defendants--Jorge Sanchez, Rubidia Lopez and Isiais Antonio Aguilar Martinez--also face murder charges for an accident that killed one man, authorities said.

Of the 30 defendants named in the indictment, so far nine have been convicted, 13 are headed for trial and eight others face outstanding arrest warrants, Deputy Dist. Atty. Barry Thorpe said.

Authorities uncovered the ring following a June, 17, 1992, crash that killed Jose Luis Lopez Perez, 29, a passenger in a car driven by Sanchez, who is accused by prosecutors of provoking a crash with a car carrier truck on the Golden State Freeway, causing the truck to flip over and crush the back of the car.

The crash was a deadly example of a chain of similar staged wrecks involving big rigs, marking a frightening escalation of the relatively common staged crashes on city streets, according to authorities.

Superior Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper on Friday fined Castillo $200 and sentenced her to three years probation, with the condition that if Castillo does not violate her probation, the conspiracy charge will be reduced to a misdemeanor and dismissed.

The other defendants who have all either pleaded guilty or no contest to insurance fraud charges have received similar sentences.

So far, Oscar Portillo, the owner of the car involved in the fatal crash, has received the toughest sentence of any of the defendants, Thorpe said: two years in prison.

“We’ve asked for more time than they’ve been given,” said Thorpe. “But obviously our primary defendant is Gary Miller and we’re really satisfied with how that prosecution is going.”

A trial-setting hearing for Miller, Lopez, Martinez and some of the other defendants has been set for March 14.