Lawyer Held in Workers’ Comp Fraud : Insurance: Eight others are arrested in what authorities call one of the biggest such schemes in Los Angeles history.

A Beverly Hills attorney and eight others were arrested Thursday after being indicted in what officials are calling one of the biggest workers’ compensation fraud rings in Los Angeles history.

The scam, as authorities describe it, allegedly generated phony insurance claims worth tens of millions of dollars and was one of the most brazen and sophisticated workers’ compensation frauds yet uncovered.

It involved a massive telemarketing scheme in which banks of $6-an-hour employees would recruit claimants by making “cold calls” to recently unemployed people and telling them they might be entitled to monetary benefits from their former employers, authorities said.

“They targeted the most vulnerable group,” said Carol Whyte, a deputy Los Angeles district attorney involved in the nearly two-year probe.

The operation recruited “many thousands” of claimants, each of whom was referred to medical offices where chiropractors and other practitioners ran up thousands of dollars in billings for useless procedures, according to Whyte and Ed Feldman, acting chief of the district attorney’s workers’ compensation fraud unit, which investigated the case along with the state Insurance Department.

In at least one case, a man with a legitimate claim was accidentally recruited, Whyte said. The man, whose knee had been broken in a warehouse accident, was refused care because claimants were being funneled through the system so tightly that it would have slowed things down to have to perform actual treatment, she said.

Faced with spiraling workers’ compensation costs--including those from fraud--the Legislature last year passed legislation to reform the workers’ compensation system. At the same time, prosecutors have become more aggressive in their efforts to root out fraud. Only in the last year have authorities succeeded in bringing criminal charges against alleged masterminds of fraud schemes.

The lawyer charged with devising the scheme--and who is believed to have personally reaped a fortune in kickbacks from the practitioners--is Robert M. Ball, 35, of Beverly Hills. Ball and eight others were arrested Thursday, a day after being secretly indicted by a Los Angeles County grand jury, Feldman said. The 10th suspect was still at large Thursday night.

The 10 were charged with felonies that include fraud, conspiracy and receiving money for unlawful referrals.

Also arrested Thursday were Arthur L. Carlisle, 37, a Monterey Park chiropractor; Charles Murrel Valyan, 45, a Pasadena chiropractor; George P. Rowell, 55, a Lynwood psychologist; Reginald P. Mason, 27, of Los Angeles, president of a collection agency called Drexel, Melton & Lynch; Anna R. Harmon, 28, of Los Angeles; Sam Calvert, 27, of Compton; Ana Fuentes, 21, of Los Angeles, and Vince D. Williams, 31, of Los Angeles.

The nine suspects were all in custody late Thursday night and could not be reached for comment.

The telemarketers, who were pushed to meet quotas of six to eight claimants a day, sometimes worked from printed lists of laid-off workers that included telephone and Social Security numbers, as well as names of previous employers. When these lists of “prospects” were exhausted, investigators say, the telemarketers would be handed torn-out sections of the telephone book and told to work their way through those names.

The callers identified themselves as representatives of the “California Employee Protection Agency,” a name that investigators say was chosen to make people think they were dealing with a state agency.

When prospects showed interest, they were quickly given appointments with a chiropractor, a dentist and a psychologist. The chiropractor billed an average of $866 per claimant, the dentist $1,650 and the psychologist $3,000, said Gary Hernandez, the deputy insurance commissioner who oversees fraud investigations.