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DESCRIPTION:2016 San Francisco Workers Memorial Day\nRemember The Dead And Fight For 
 The Living\nDefend Our Health & Safety Rights And Our Lives And 
 Families\nThursday April 28, 2016 7:00PM\nILWU Local 34 (next to AT&T 
 Ballpark\n801 2nd St. San Francisco, California\nApril 28 is Workers 
 Memorial Day and is commemorated throughout the world for workers who have 
 died or been injured on the job and to fight for health and safety on the 
 job for workers and the public.\nIn California workers die nearly every day 
 because of the lack of health and safety protection and many are sickened 
 by toxins and workplace bullying on the job which is reaching epidemic 
 rates.\nThere also have been incidents of =93hanging nooses=94 put up on 
 worksites at SF Recology and the Bay Bridge to terrorize and intimidate 
 African American and other workers.\nAt the same time there are only 200 
 Cal OSHA health and safety\ninspectors for 18.5 million workers in the 
 State and only 2,000 for the federal government. We need to demand that 
 there be proper enforcement for health and safety violations including jail 
 for deaths caused by violating health and safety laws.\nAdditionally as a 
 result of deregulation of workers compensation in California under SB 899 
 and SB 863 seriously injured workers have to go through hoops and a system 
 called independent medical review to get medical treatment and the 
 insurance controlled Workers Comp system stalls treatment and instead 
 doctors in many cases are forced to \nprescribe opiate drugs that end up 
 addicting injured workers and \ndestroying their lives.\nUnder Federal and 
 California law, workers union and unorganized are supposed to be protected 
 when they complain to OSHA about health and safety violations. The reality 
 is that companies and bosses regularly\nbully, harass and fire workers who 
 fight for their health and safety for themselves and the public.\nFederal 
 OSHA lawyer Darrell Whitman who was investigating retaliation complaints at 
 PG&E, Fed Ex, Test America, Lockheed Martin and other companies found that 
 there was illegal retaliation and then OSHA management with the backing of 
 DOL Secretary Of Labor Tom Perez. OSHA managers bullied and harassed AFGE 
 investigators and lawyers in the Whistleblower Protection Program and 
 illegally fired Whitman for trying to defend OSHA whistleblowers. We will 
 discuss what workers can do to protect their rights and get justice and 
 accountability.\nIt is time to remember the dead and fight for the living. 
 We have a \nright to work in a healthy and safe workplace for ourselves and 
 our \nfamilies.\nInitial Speakers:\nBrenda Barros, SEIU 1021 SF General 
 Hospital Chapter Chair\nDr. Larry Rose, Past Medical Director of 
 Cal-OSHA\nDaryle Washington, IBT 350 Worker At SF Recology\nDaniel Berman, 
 Health and Safety Advocate and author of =93Death on the Job\nDorian 
 Maxwell, Fired MTA TWU 250A bus driver and OSHA whistleblower\nRoland 
 Sheppard, Retired Painters Local 4 BA\nFor more information Injured Workers 
 National Network\nwww.iwnn.org\nEndorsed by\nSMART UTU 1741, IWNN, 
 UPWA\nhttps://www.facebook.com/Injured-Workers-National-Network-=85/\n(415)282-1908\ninfo@iwnn.org\n\n\nBillion 
 Dollar Scam In California Workers Comp System Destroys Workers And Bilks 
 The Public\nhttps://www.revealnews.org/episodes/billion-dollar-scam/\nApr 
 2, 2016 SHARE\nCalifornia’s workers’ compensation program covers 15 
 million workers across the state. If you get hurt on the job – fall off a 
 ladder, for instance – it’s the system you turn to. Most employers are 
 required to carry workers’ comp insurance, which helps cover medical 
 bills and lost wages for injured employees.\nBut Reveal reporter Christina 
 Jewett has discovered serious fraud in the system after reviewing thousands 
 of documents. They show that in the last decade, more than 80 people have 
 been accused of cheating California’s workers’ comp medical system out 
 of $1 billion.\nJewett and producer Delaney Hall tell the story using an 
 undercover law enforcement wiretap and the accounts of a worker, employer 
 and investigator.\nHost Al Letson then sits down with Jewett to really dig 
 into what it is that makes workers’ comp such an easy target for people 
 who want to take advantage of it.\nAnd finally, we revisit a story about 
 the bogus screws that ended up in spines of surgery patients. You can 
 consider it the prequel to the main investigation …\nProfiteering 
 masquerades as medical care for injured California 
 workers\nhttps://www.revealnews.org/…/profiteering-masquerades-as-m…/\nBy 
 Christina Jewett / March 31, 2016 \nPriscilla Lujan was awake soothing her 
 infant son at 10 p.m. and again in the middle of the night. She let him gum 
 one of the salty pistachios she was eating. She mixed a bottle of formula 
 at the side of their shared bed.\nIt was the fitful kind of night that’s 
 easily forgotten after a strong cup of coffee and a shy smile from a 
 sleep-refreshed baby.\nBut that’s not what happened the next morning. 
 When Lujan woke up, her son – not yet 6 months old on Feb. 3, 2012 – 
 was cold. His lips, blue. His eyes, half open. She screamed to her mother 
 to call 911.\nAt the hospital, Lujan stood in a room rocking her baby from 
 side to side, sobbing. By then, Andrew Gallegos already was dead.\nPolice 
 showed up at Lujan’s East Los Angeles home about a week later – more 
 than a dozen of them. They seized her medications. They handcuffed her and 
 drove her to the police station, where a detective demanded answers: Why 
 did her baby have toxic levels of pain medicine in his bloodstream?\nDuring 
 the interview, it dawned on Lujan: The pain cream she had slathered on her 
 knee had gotten into her son’s mouth, through the pistachio and bottle of 
 formula.\n\nPhotos of tubes of pain cream seized from Priscilla Lujan’s 
 home were presented to an Orange County grand jury. Prosecutors alleged 
 that businessman Kareem Ahmed helped formulate the toxic cream and was 
 culpable in the death of Lujan’s infant son.\nCredit: Orange County 
 Superior Court\n“Oh my God, I killed my baby,” she told the 
 detective.\nSoon after, the focus of the case shifted. The new target was 
 Kareem Ahmed, a millionaire businessman who made his fortune selling 
 medicated creams for patients like Lujan, who struggled with pain after an 
 injury on the job.\nAhmed eventually would be indicted for involuntary 
 manslaughter in Andrew’s death and accused of a far more sweeping crime: 
 paying more than $25 million in bribes to doctors, including Lujan’s, who 
 prescribed the pain-relief creams.\nTo the people who combat fraud in 
 California’s $24 billion workers’ compensation system, the case 
 exemplifies unchecked profiteering that jeopardizes injured workers’ 
 health and lives.\nIt is one of more than a dozen cases that, taken 
 together, outline a medical landscape in which corruption masquerades as 
 medical care for some of California’s injured workers.\nA review of 
 thousands of criminal court records by Reveal from The Center for 
 Investigative Reporting shows a system in which pay-to-play schemes trump 
 patient care, particularly in unregulated treatments rejected by insurers 
 and disputed in obscure courts throughout the state.\nProsecutors are 
 beginning to turn the tide, pursuing charges against more than 80 medical 
 professionals who’ve handled more than 100,000 injured-worker cases, most 
 of them originating in Southern California.\nDefendants include a physician 
 assistant accused of “aggravated mayhem” after he operated on dozens of 
 injured workers’ knees and shoulders, despite lacking surgical training. 
 The outcomes often were disastrous.\n“It still hurts today,” one worker 
 testified in 2015, describing his unsuccessful 2010 shoulder surgery 
 through an interpreter. “I can’t, you know, bend my arm, 
 really.”\nAlong with the court records, Reveal analyzed data from more 
 than a million workers’ compensation court cases, which show that over 
 the last decade, workers have been swept into medical billing mills, 
 prescribed unregulated medications and advised to undergo sometimes 
 unneeded or high-risk surgery by doctors who were raking in bribes.\nRATHER 
 LISTEN TO THE STORY?\nSubscribe to the Reveal podcast to get this and other 
 stories.\nProsecutors estimate that the accused have burdened the system 
 with more than $1 billion in demands for money intended to help injured 
 workers get back on the job.\nThe cases are being fought vigorously at 
 every turn. Ahmed’s attorney secured an early victory, getting all but 
 one count in his indictment thrown out; the prosecutor says she will refile 
 the charges. Other attorneys defending the accused say the barrage of cases 
 is a witch hunt that scares medical providers away from the system, 
 limiting workers’ access to care.\nTaken together, the alleged schemes 
 inject cynicism into a system in which workers already are at odds with 
 insurers, which can save money when they deny care. They heap costs in the 
 form of higher premiums on employers, who in turn raise prices for goods or 
 services or stem hiring as they pay the highest workers’ compensation 
 rates in the nation.\nWorkers such as Tammy Martinez, though, pay the 
 greatest price. The 56-year-old truck driver hurt her back pushing a 1-ton 
 cart.\nThe workers’ compensation attorney whom she relied on to help her 
 navigate the system pleaded guilty in 2014 to being part of a criminal 
 club: people taking bribes from hospital executive Michael Drobot.\nDrobot 
 had pleaded guilty in early 2014 to paying at least $20 million in 
 kickbacks to dozens of marketers, doctors and others who helped him fill 
 the surgery suites at the now-defunct Pacific Hospital of Long Beach. 
 Federal prosecutors linked the bribes to more than 4,400 risky spinal 
 operations at the hospital.\nMartinez’s lawyer, Sean O’Keefe, 
 recommended that she see a surgeon, who, she later would learn, also was 
 accused of taking bribes from Drobot. O’Keefe’s guilty plea singles out 
 Martinez’s case as one spurred by illegal bribes and a conspiracy 
 compelling her surgeon to perform a particularly complex – and expensive 
 – operation.\n\nMichael Drobot, executive of the now-defunct Pacific 
 Hospital of Long Beach, pleaded guilty in 2014 to paying at least $20 
 million in bribes to bring spinal surgeries to his hospital. \nCredit: 
 Pacific Hospital of Long Beach website via Archive.org\nWhen it came time 
 for Martinez’s spinal surgery in October 2011, all did not go well. 
 Doctors noted that after the procedure, her left foot grew pale and 
 pulseless. Within weeks, her leg had to be amputated above the knee.\nSince 
 then, she said, it’s been a difficult journey to learn to stand again and 
 to discover that her young grandson was not, in fact, afraid of her.\n“I 
 lost myself,” Martinez said. “I struggle every day to get the person I 
 used to be back.”\nAcross Southern California, Reveal found, companies 
 employ intensive marketing to tap into a particularly vulnerable segment of 
 the workforce. They blanket Spanish-language media with ads and target 
 Latinos with calls to their homes. They suggest that filing a case could 
 lead to a windfall.\n“Receive up to $4,000 per month,” proclaim 
 Spanish-language signs, business cards and fliers posted across Southern 
 California. One workers’ compensation attorney troubled by the ads called 
 the number out of curiosity. After that, messages from a buzzing call 
 center lit up his phone five times a day – for months.\nCallers wanted to 
 know “if I knew anyone who had been injured,” San Diego attorney John 
 A. Don said, “if I could refer anyone to them.”\nChristine Baker, 
 director of the state Department of Industrial Relations, which administers 
 workers’ compensation, initially responded to questions with a statement 
 noting that other state authorities oversee medical providers and health 
 fraud. But two weeks ago, she said her department had taken a closer look 
 at unregulated medical care, and “we know there’s a problem.”\n“We 
 want workers to get appropriate care,” she said. “We don’t want 
 overcare or undercare; either way is wrong. Delivery of care needs to be 
 evidence-based, appropriate and quickly delivered.”\nBaker said medical 
 abuse is a symptom of a “deeper problem,” particularly in Southern 
 California.\nThere, workers’ comp stands out as an easy target for 
 scammers. While health care programs such as Medicare have developed an 
 arsenal of weapons to ward off fraud, California state regulators have few 
 tools at their disposal. For one thing, the state shares oversight with 
 hundreds of insurers and self-insured employers, leaving no one clearly in 
 charge.\nProsecutors filing a growing parade of cases are exposing this 
 leadership vacuum and how it allows operatives to bypass the most competent 
 medical providers for the highest bidder. Workers who’ve been hurt on the 
 job often are the last to find out that they have been exploited – if 
 they find out at all.\n“We’re talking about a patient that has become a 
 commodity,” said Don Marshall, chairman of the state’s Fraud Assessment 
 Commission, which distributes funds to prosecutors who fight workers’ 
 compensation fraud. “It’s become something to trade and sell on the 
 open market for no other reason than to generate income.”\n‘Nobody 
 cares’ about workers’ comp\nAs investigators began to puzzle over the 
 2012 death of Andrew Gallegos, it did not take them long to realize they 
 already had a window into the world of the man who ultimately would be 
 charged in the case.\n\nBusinessman Kareem Ahmed has been accused of paying 
 more than $25 million in kickbacks to doctors in a workers’ compensation 
 fraud scheme. \nCredit: Paul A. Hebert/Invision/AP file\nKareem Ahmed was 
 the owner of Landmark Medical Management. He is not a pharmacist. But 
 prosecutors, in the continuing legal case against him related to Andrew’s 
 death, would point out that he still delved into the science of mixing 
 medications to formulate pain creams.\nAhmed’s goal, they allege, was not 
 to make the most effective salve, but the most profitable one. Experts 
 would testify that, if ingested, the opioid-infused cream was a “loaded 
 gun” that could kill an adult. His firms billed insurers $400 to $1,700 
 per tube for creams sent to Priscilla Lujan, totaling $59,000, court 
 records show.\nAn undercover recording made nearly four years before 
 Ahmed’s indictment gives a wider view of the world of workers’ 
 compensation medical executives. In that recording, Ahmed makes it clear 
 that many of them are up to no good – and no one is stopping 
 them.\nBusinessman Cyrus Sorat secretly recorded the conversation. Also in 
 the pain cream business, Sorat was working for federal prosecutors as part 
 of an agreement to seek leniency in a separate workers’ compensation 
 fraud case.\nAs the two men shared a leisurely lunch at an upscale 
 restaurant in Ontario, California, Ahmed marveled over the scale of the 
 exploits of others who, like him, made their millions off health care for 
 injured workers.\nOne stood out, he said, for paying doctors up to $50,000 
 a month to perform invasive and risky back surgeries: Drobot, the Long 
 Beach hospital executive who eventually would plead guilty to bribing the 
 surgeons.\n“How come nobody does anything to him, man?” Ahmed implores 
 in the recording, pounding the table.\nWhen it comes to workers’ comp, 
 nobody cares.”\n— Kareem Ahmed\nowner of Landmark Medical Management, 
 in a secretly recorded conversation with businessman Cyrus Sorat\nSorat 
 lowers his voice. “Let me tell you something. If you do Medicare – the 
 feds hang you,” he says.\n“Oh, I know, that’s why I never touch 
 Medicare,” Ahmed says.\n“But when it comes to workers’ comp, …” 
 Sorat continues.\n“Nobody gives a fuck,” Ahmed finishes the 
 sentence.\n“Nobody cares,” Sorat agrees. Ahmed laughs.\nThe men go on 
 to discuss other workers’ compensation moguls. They cluck about a former 
 chiropractor who they say had gotten a multimillion-dollar settlement from 
 a large insurer. Sorat calls him “a criminal.”\nSIGN UP FOR OUR 
 NEWSLETTER\nStay up to date with the latest investigations and episodes 
 from Reveal delivered to your inbox.\n\n“Yeah, and then he gets money. 
 He’s wanted in six different states,” Ahmed said. “But nobody did 
 anything. … Nobody does shit.”\nThey also talk about David Wayne Fish, 
 a businessman who pleaded no contest in 2010 to taking money for patient 
 referrals. He was accused of organizing dozens of lawyers and doctors to 
 steer more than 4,000 cases to preferred medical providers and run up high 
 bills.\nFish’s sentence: probation, fines and an order to stop demanding 
 the $60 million he was seeking from insurers.\n“He’s … walking! What 
 happened to him? Nothing,” Ahmed said. “Six fucking years of 
 (investigation), thousands of hours, and he’s walking? … He’ll … 
 make a $100 million in one year again.”\n“When it comes to workers’ 
 comp, …” Sorat said.\nAhmed finished his sentence once again: “Yeah, 
 nobody cares.”\nAbuse abounds in specialized courts\nOn a sunny Monday in 
 November, the workers’ compensation court in Marina del Rey is swarming 
 with activity. Lawyers weave down the halls from small courtroom to 
 courtroom and gather in clusters. Others fervently broker deals on their 
 cellphones.\nThere are 24 courts like this up and down the state. But the 
 activity is particularly frenetic in Southern California, where the 
 paperwork that fuels the court’s pace comes in by the virtual 
 truckload.\n\nChristine Baker, director of the California Department of 
 Industrial Relations, says her department has taken a closer look at 
 unregulated medical care, and “we know there’s a problem.” \nCredit: 
 California Department of Industrial Relations\nThese courts spend the bulk 
 of their time settling liens – claims for payments that medical and other 
 service providers file against insurers or self-insured employers.\nThe 
 lien system was created to protect the injured worker. It guarantees that 
 even if insurers deny medical care, workers will have a medical 
 professional to whom they can turn.\nBut the system also throws its doors 
 open to providers excluded from insurers’ networks of preferred 
 professionals. It allows thousands of unregulated entities to bill for any 
 treatment, whiz-bang device, pain cream or DNA test. The only limit is the 
 providers’ willingness to roll the dice on how much money they’ll rake 
 in at workers’ comp courts.\nThe lien system thrives in California – 
 more than in any other state. One national insurance executive estimated in 
 2010 that his company does one-fifth of its business in California – but 
 deals with more than four-fifths of its liens there.\nThat volume creates 
 “a very thick forest for thieves and scoundrels to hide out in,” said 
 Lachlan Taylor, a former special counsel to the Department of Industrial 
 Relations who analyzed the lien system in 2010.\nHis work informed a 2012 
 law that cut down on liens with a new $150 fee required to demand payment 
 in workers’ compensation courts. It also gave insurers new powers to deny 
 money to providers that aren’t approved to treat injured workers.\nYet 
 claims for unapproved care still are cropping up, said Baker, the 
 Department of Industrial Relations’ chief. And the number of liens filed 
 last year is even higher than it was when Taylor initially concluded that 
 the system “rewards bad behavior.”\nBaker said her department has begun 
 reviewing the medical providers who currently file the largest number of 
 liens. The result: “We do note that many are (criminally) 
 indicted.”\nThe shifting array of schemes is difficult for government 
 authorities to track, much less for workers such as Denise Rivera. Her 
 medical care providers amassed bills – or liens – amounting to $95,000. 
 Yet the knee she sought help with continues to ache, swell and give 
 out.\nShe injured it while working at a center for severely disabled 
 children, a nursing assistant job she loved. She worked the night shift, 
 feeding children, turning them when they slept and getting them ready for 
 the next day.\n“When you came in, (the kids) had a smile for you,” said 
 Rivera, who lives in Riverside County.\nTwo days after Thanksgiving in 
 2011, she slipped and fell while giving a child a shower. Rivera said she 
 immediately felt paralyzed by leg and back pain. Her company’s doctor 
 said she needed knee surgery, but her employer’s insurance company denied 
 the request.\nRivera saw a commercial on TV for legal help with a 
 work-injury case, called the number and got connected to California Injury 
 Lawyer Inc. The Corona-based company sent people to her house to take her 
 information and referred her to a Riverside clinic, she said.\nThey’re 
 intrusive. I have people tell me that they’ll call every single 
 day.”\n— Teena Barton\nICW Group Insurance Cos. special investigator, 
 on marketers and advertisers\nTeena Barton is familiar with this kind of 
 advertising through her work as a special investigator in San Diego for the 
 ICW Group Insurance Cos., a workers’ compensation insurance firm.\nBarton 
 said marketers and advertisers are invasive, often pressuring workers to 
 refer friends and co-workers, who get cold calls at home. She said workers 
 often are pressured into filing work injury claims and put on a lengthy 
 course of medical treatment.\n“The problem is once you’re on that wave, 
 that wave’s going to take you,” Barton said. “That’s what the 
 system is. ”\nMultiple medical procedures\nThe people who asked Denise 
 Rivera, 54, to sign papers advised her to report to a Riverside clinic, she 
 said.\nThe clinic packed her schedule with appointments. Clinic staff gave 
 her what looked like a school lunch menu, with the names of doctors and 
 companies she was expected to see three times per week.\nRivera cobbled 
 together the gas money or borrowed family members’ cars to make her 
 appointments. She sat in the clinic’s jammed waiting room for hours at a 
 time and watched medical staff wheel in suitcases full of devices to treat 
 workers.\n\nDenise Rivera said she didn’t work for four years while 
 waiting for her workers’ compensation case to be resolved. She ultimately 
 got a settlement for $32,500 – about a year’s pay.\nCredit: John M. 
 Blodgett for Reveal\nShe said she received MRIs, acupuncture, shockwave 
 therapy and treatments with a device that seemed like a jackhammer thumping 
 her knee. At one point, clinic staff sent her home with an electrical pain 
 treatment device, but they forgot to include the electrode pads needed to 
 make it work.\nPain creams that “seemed like Bengay,” according to 
 Rivera, arrived in the mail. For those creams alone, records show that 
 Kareem Ahmed’s company billed $17,102. Ahmed is the pain-cream executive 
 who was charged in baby Andrew Gallegos’ death. The pharmacist who made 
 145,000 tubes of cream for his company got $35 to $72 per tube, public 
 records say.\nRecords in Rivera’s case show the total bill sent by 
 providers to the insurer for her care: $95,257. She had never seen that 
 total, and it shocked her.\n“No way,” she said, then added: “None of 
 the treatments they’ve given me has helped.”\nRivera said she did not 
 work for four years while waiting for her workers’ compensation case to 
 be resolved. Penniless, she set up her bedroom in her mother’s 
 garage.\nShe ultimately got a settlement in the case to compensate her for 
 a permanent disability. The amount was $32,500 – about what she would 
 have made in one year at work.\nGoing after ‘The Godfather’\nRiverside 
 County prosecutors now allege that Rivera walked into a clinic, with eight 
 affiliate sites, that ran a $122 million scam.\nThey filed charges in July 
 2014 against attorney Cary Abramowitz and chiropractor Peyman Heidary. 
 Prosecutors say in court records that Heidary is nicknamed “The 
 Godfather” for masterminding the profit-centered medical network that 
 Rivera encountered.\nHeidary is accused of controlling medical treatment at 
 the clinics, even though he’s not a doctor, which is a crime in 
 California. Prosecutors say he also illegally owned and controlled law 
 offices, even though he’s not a lawyer.\nProsecutors claim that workers 
 came into the network via “cappers” – people paid to recruit patients 
 – who got referrals from English- and Spanish-language 800 numbers. At 
 Heidary’s direction, clerical staff allegedly padded the cases with 
 additional supposedly injured body parts, according to court records.\nOf 
 the $122 million Heidary’s group sought, one document from prosecutors 
 indicates that it had collected $18 million from insurers as of April 
 2015.\nRivera said the allegations were bad news for her, given that she 
 trusted the legal and medical professionals to fight for her best 
 interests.\n“It makes me angry,” she said. “I kind of want to 
 cry.”\nBasically, I got screwed.”\n— Denise Rivera\nformer nursing 
 assistant\nHeidary has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Michael Khouri, 
 said the case lacks legal and factual merit and has ruined Heidary’s 
 reputation. All the care, he said, was medically necessary.\nWhen told 
 about Rivera’s plight, Khouri said he’s not moved by the case of one 
 worker disappointed with her care, given that patients “die in the best 
 hospitals … all the time.”\nWorkers’ compensation court records show 
 that Heidary’s clinic dropped claims in May for payment in Rivera’s 
 case. Attorneys involved in the case say the bills were resolved in a 
 confidential settlement.\nWorkers struggle physically and legally\nState 
 and federal prosecutors have filed cases against more than 80 people for 
 medical scams victimizing injured workers since 2010. The cases are moving 
 forward in courthouses from Fresno to San Diego and are shaping up to be 
 vigorous fights, with defendants battling every step of the way.\nParallel 
 civil lawsuits also have emerged. They tend to pit insurers against medical 
 providers in disputes over money.\nBut little is being done in any of the 
 legal venues for injured workers who’ve been victimized.\n\nRoger 
 Brown’s doctor advised him to undergo back surgery in 2011 at Pacific 
 Hospital of Long Beach, at the height of the cash-for-surgery scam. The 
 operation did not go well, and he now relies on a caretaker to help him 
 each day.\nCredit: Annie Tritt for Reveal\nMany, such as Denise Rivera, 
 sign away their rights to future medical treatment in workers’ 
 compensation cases. Others move forward with their lives, debilitated by 
 medical care that left them worse off and unaware of the dynamics that 
 shaped medical decisions.\nThat latter group includes Roger Brown, 59.\nHis 
 back hurt badly after he was rear-ended in a car, but he still could work 
 as a private investigator for a Riverside County law firm. He went fishing 
 nearly every weekend and looked forward to annual deep-sea 
 expeditions.\nBrown’s doctor advised him to undergo back surgery in 
 January 2011 at Pacific Hospital of Long Beach, where, Brown recalled, 
 “he just felt the care was better.” That was at the height of the 
 cash-for-surgery scam.\nThe surgery did not go well. During the first 
 attempt to drill screws into Brown’s spine, the doctor drove special 
 hardware 9 millimeters into his spinal cord. Even heavily medicated, the 
 pain was unbearable.\n“I would have taken my own life if I could have,” 
 Brown said. “It was excruciating pain.”\nHe underwent a second surgery 
 to fix the problem but emerged unable to drive or even work. Brown relies 
 on a caretaker to help him each day.\n\nIn one type of fraud in the 
 California workers’ compensation system, patients were advised to undergo 
 high-risk surgeries by doctors who were raking in bribes. \nCredit: 
 Praisaeng/Shutterstock.com\nThe doctor who advised Brown to undergo the 
 surgery in Long Beach has been accused of taking kickbacks from Michael 
 Drobot, the executive who pleaded guilty to bribing doctors to operate at 
 his hospital. Another surgeon who assisted in the case faces the same 
 accusations.\nBrown was so disgusted by the care that he sued for 
 malpractice in April 2012. He didn’t get far before he decided to drop 
 the case. As for the civil bribery accusations against his doctors, “I 
 never heard anything like that,” Brown said.\nEven if Brown had known 
 about the illegal profiteering allegations over his medical care, it’s 
 not clear that it would have gotten him anywhere.\nWorkers who’ve 
 sustained medical harm under workers’ comp have little recourse, 
 according to Irvine attorney Kevin Liebeck, partly because there is so 
 little money in it for patients or lawyers.\nLawyers are reluctant to take 
 medical malpractice cases due to caps on payouts in place since the 1970s, 
 said Liebeck, a partner in a firm that takes such cases. Attorneys who want 
 to help workers also are unlikely to go after a doctor for fraud because 
 doctors’ liability insurance usually does not cover fraudulent care.\nAnd 
 most lawyers, he said, know that means they’ll be left struggling to get 
 money from a doctor who can easily hide it.\n“If you do stuff that is 
 beyond the pale … and make a lot of money on it, even if you get caught 
 and get a lot of grief, you will ultimately get out ahead,” Liebeck said. 
 “Crime does pay for a lot of this stuff.”\nCases move forward for 
 high-profile defendants\nWhether coming out ahead is the case for some of 
 the high-profile defendants in workers’ compensation fraud cases remains 
 to be seen.\nDrobot, the Long Beach hospital executive, faces sentencing in 
 June for paying bribes to pack his surgery suites with workers. He also 
 pleaded guilty to bribing former state Sen. Ronald Calderon, who is 
 fighting accusations in a separate case for delaying legislation that cut 
 into the astronomical profit Drobot and others made on spinal surgery 
 hardware. Drobot declined to comment.\nCyrus Sorat, the pain-cream 
 businessman who made the audio recording of his friend Kareem Ahmed, went 
 to prison in 2013 following his stint as a confidential witness for 
 prosecutors. The judge who sentenced Sorat described his undercover work as 
 active and significant, saying it would be valuable in multiple 
 cases.\nRELATED\nHow California’s health care system for workers forgot 
 about fraud\nAlthough he faced a possible sentence of up to six and a half 
 years, Sorat ultimately served two years in federal prison in California 
 for mail fraud. He pleaded guilty to selling worthless billing rights to a 
 third-party firm for pain creams that never were delivered to 
 workers.\nSorat now faces new insurance fraud charges, also over his pain 
 cream business. He has pleaded not guilty in the case, and his attorney did 
 not return calls seeking comment.\nAhmed is fighting the case prosecutors 
 filed against him in 2014. His attorney, Benjamin Gluck, said their early 
 success in throwing out most of Ahmed’s indictment speaks “loudly about 
 the quality of the allegations and, needless to say, we emphatically 
 dispute them.”\nGluck noted that the undercover tapes obtained by Reveal 
 contain no incriminating statements by Ahmed.\nFrom what Ahmed told Sorat 
 in their freewheeling conversation in 2010, criminal charges were not a 
 fate he expected. Ahmed confided then that he had a plan for his millions. 
 He wanted to build a children’s hospital in San Bernardino County – a 
 Cedars-Sinai for kids. But, he lamented, “nobody believes me.”\nAhmed 
 faces another legal challenge. Priscilla Lujan filed a civil lawsuit 
 against Ahmed and her doctor in 2013. Lujan declined to be interviewed for 
 this article, but a transcript in Ahmed’s criminal case details the hours 
 of Andrew’s death and all that her encounter with Ahmed’s company cost 
 her.\nAfter losing her baby, she testified, Ahmed’s companies kept 
 sending the pain cream to her home and billing insurers for them – 
 $33,000 in all. She threw the boxes in her garage. She also lost custody of 
 her older son. Child welfare officials declared her home unsafe, she said, 
 because they believed she fed the toxic cream to her baby.\nHoles in 
 oversight leave California workers’ comp vulnerable to 
 fraud\nhttps://www.revealnews.org/…/holes-in-oversight-leave-cali…/\nTopics: 
 Health Care / Health Care Scams\nBy Christina Jewett / April 4, 2016 
 \ni\nIn many ways, scamming the health system meant to heal California’s 
 injured workers is just too easy.\nAnyone can hang out a shingle and 
 purport to be a medical vendor or caregiver by sending a letter to the 
 state – no proof required. Unscrupulous providers can run up tens of 
 thousands of dollars in bills for meaningless drug tests, salves and 
 medical equipment, knowing that injured workers never will lay eyes on the 
 bill.\n\nThe gaps in oversight are so tempting that one prosecutor says 
 scammers test-drive ways to fleece the system, often pocketing millions 
 before anyone in a vast market of insurers catches on.\n“They study the 
 weaknesses of the system and exploit it,” said Shaddi Kamiabipour, an 
 Orange County deputy district attorney.\nKamiabipour is among the legion of 
 state and federal prosecutors throughout California who maintain that more 
 than $1 billion has been siphoned out of the system.\nYet their case 
 documents reveal something else: gaping holes in the state’s strategy to 
 prevent fraud. The architects of other major health programs shored up 
 similar weaknesses long ago. Here is a comparison:\nConsolidate the 
 power\nWhen Medicare makes rules, it has a strong incentive to encourage 
 doctors, pharmacists and others to follow them: money.\nThe purs\n“When 
 everyone is responsible, no one is,” said Kate Zimmermann, a Kern County 
 prosecutor who has combated workers’ compensation fraud for eight years. 
 “He who has the gold can write the rules. … If you have one checkbook, 
 you can say, ‘If you want the check, this is how.’ ”\nLeveraging the 
 power to zip the wallet, the federal Affordable Care Act handed a 
 particularly powerful fraud-fighting tool to state Medicaid agencies. They 
 must stop paying a health care provider if they determine there is a 
 “credible allegation of fraud.” Medical providers then can fight the 
 determination in administrative courts.\nNo such rule exists in 
 California’s workers’ compensation program. Yet the facts outlined in 
 one case suggest it could have spared numerous questionable surgeries.\nDr. 
 Douglas Mills testified in court that in 2007, he formally complained about 
 a clinic at which he saw an improbable number of MRI reports come back 
 supporting the case for surgery.\n“In my opinion, people were getting 
 hurt, so I wanted to stop it,” Mills said of his experience at San 
 Fernando-based Frontline Medical Associates. Court records show that a 
 state insurance department investigation was underway even before Mills’ 
 report.\nFurther testimony confirmed Mills’ suspicions, including a 
 clinic staff member who said she was paid a bonus to falsify MRI reports, 
 bolstering the case for surgery. The revelations came to light last year 
 – eight years after Mills’ initial complaint – when 15 people related 
 to the clinic werecriminally indicted. The charges in the pending case 
 include aggravated mayhem for surgeries that prosecutors deemed 
 inappropriate.\nRoot out sham facilities\nMedicare officials know scammers 
 can be brazen enough to steal patient identities, fabricate a sham medical 
 office and bill for phantom care. As a result, the federal program has set 
 up a system to check on medical offices.\nMedicare uses its own data to 
 determine whether classes of providers with track records of graft are 
 medium or high risk, such as wheelchair merchants and home health 
 agencies.\nBoth types of providers are visited when they initially open, 
 three or five years later – depending on the industry – and whenever 
 officials get a complaint. A government-contracted auditor interviews 
 operators and takes a look behind the counter, according to Jason 
 Weinstock, a former supervisory investigator for the U.S. Health and Human 
 Services Department’s inspector general.\nIn California’s workers’ 
 compensation system, no such data reviews or facility vetting occur on a 
 regular basis. In fact, no central authority performs inspections to make 
 sure medical firms are doing what they claim to do.\nInsurers can steer 
 workers to a network of hand-picked medical providers. But a shadow system 
 operates to the side, in which workers can get medical care from thousands 
 of unregulated providers who seek payment later in workers’ compensation 
 courts.\nIn that vacuum of oversight, James Allen Wilson saw a golden 
 opportunity.\nWilson worked in the billing department at a hospital, where 
 he had access to the personal information of workers’ compensation 
 patients. Using their information, he set up a fake lab, billed for bogus 
 services and started collecting $354,000 in checks at a post office 
 box.\nHe got caught, according to news reports, when a savvy claims 
 adjuster noted that he billed to perform tests on a dead man.\nWilson 
 pleaded guilty to identity theft, grand theft and insurance fraud in 2009. 
 In the years since, no checks of workers’ compensation medical providers 
 have been instituted.\nEmpower workers to identify bogus bills\n\nKim 
 Reeder of Sherman Oaks, Calif., requested a copy of her workers’ 
 compensation medical records and discovered bills for transportation and 
 language-interpreting services she never used.\nCredit: Christina 
 Jewett/Reveal\nAlbert MacKenzie, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor 
 familiar with the Wilson case, said the oversight gaps are compounded by 
 the fact that workers don’t have a way to flag bogus care. Unlike in 
 Medicare or employer-paid health care, injured-worker patients aren’t 
 mailed an explanation of benefits, or a summary of the services and charges 
 related to their health care.\n“When you have a system that doesn’t 
 even send a patient a copy of what’s being billed for, it’s just Dodge 
 City; open season for fraud,” MacKenzie said. “It’s just a massive 
 cesspool.”\nKim Reeder, a worker who requested her medical records and 
 discovered bills for transportation and language-interpreting services she 
 never used, said mailing such information to workers would be 
 beneficial.\n“I’d like to see all workers have their billing,” said 
 Reeder, of Sherman Oaks. “If that happens, all this can go away. I just 
 think California is made of significantly more honest people than dishonest 
 people.”\nState labor officials say they’ve tried to clamp down on the 
 unregulated care through legislation that gives insurers the power to deny 
 payment for unapproved health treatments. Despite the law, though, such 
 bills for unapproved care remain commonplace in the state’s small 
 workers’ compensation courts.\nBan providers convicted of fraud\nIn 
 Medicare, medical professionals may be banned from seeking money to see 
 patients if they’ve been convicted of defrauding a health care program or 
 fraud-related offenses.\nBut those banned providers have no problem 
 starting a second career in California’s workers’ compensation 
 system.\nMedicare banned Dr. Thomas Heric in 2006 after he pleaded guilty 
 to charges related to writing reports based on diagnostic tests that turned 
 out to be fraudulent. In his letter to the judge who sentenced him, Heric 
 pledged that going forward, he would use “whatever talents I may have in 
 service to the community.”\nHeric then found a new line of work in the 
 workers’ compensation medical system. His job was to review data on 
 injured workers’ sleep patterns and issue reports needed to bill 
 insurers.\nFive years later, prosecutors accused Heric of fraud again. They 
 say he was writing virtually identical reports that gave rise to sham 
 billing. One expert testified in court that Heric’s sleep-study reports 
 were so bad that they failed to address one worker’s serious breathing 
 problems for months, a lapse that he said could harm “the general 
 public.”\nThat case is pending in Orange County Superior Court. Heric’s 
 attorney, Robert Moest, said Heric stands by the reports and is fighting 
 the charges.\n“There are different opinions in the scientific 
 community,” Moest said. “It shouldn’t be the matter of a criminal 
 charge.”\nA Reveal analysis of public records found that several other 
 chiropractors and doctors banned by Medicare moved their career to 
 workers’ compensation.\nAmong them: chiropractor David C. Nguyen. 
 Medicare banned him in 2005 over an insurance fraud conviction. Earlier 
 this year, San Diego prosecutors indicted him for insurance fraud again, 
 this time for passing along bribes from a chiropractor to a therapy center 
 – both workers’ compensation medical providers.\nLook at who’s 
 running the place\nMedicare doesn’t bar just doctors, pharmacists and 
 chiropractors with histories of fraud. It also takes a look at who’s in 
 charge.\nOfficials with the Department of Health and Human Services’ 
 inspector general’s office will investigate clinic operators’ ownership 
 and ban those with a 5 percent or greater stake who have a history of 
 certain fraud convictions, according to Jason Weinstock. The rule covers 
 direct and indirect ownership.\nNo such rule exists in workers’ comp. 
 State labor department officials said they do not have the authority to 
 review the practices of medical professionals.\nInstead, they said in a 
 statement, the boards that issue licenses to medical providers are the 
 “appropriate authority for regulation and review.” Yet no board or 
 commission checks who’s running workers’ compensation clinics.\nThe 
 state’s chiropractic board stripped Fred Khalili of his license anddenied 
 his attempt to get it back in 2013. But he still signs physicians’ 
 paychecks at two Los Angeles County workers’ compensation 
 clinics.\nKhalili’s legal problems started in 1995, when an FBI agent 
 informed him that he was under investigation for paying $135,000 in 
 kickbacks to auto-injury lawyers. Khalili was seeing a steady flow of 
 patients who’d been hurt in car crashes, court records say.\nFacing an 
 indictment, he began to work undercover for the FBI. He recorded phone 
 conversations with lawyers who demanded a cut of his medical treatment 
 income in exchange for a parade of patients. He even went to the office of 
 one lawyer who was believed to be a member of a Russian gang and kept a gun 
 in his desk drawer, according to court records.\nKhalili ultimately pleaded 
 guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion and lost his chiropractic license in 
 2000. Twelve years later, he returned to the chiropractic board, hoping to 
 get his license reinstated. The board refused, citing subsequent arrests 
 for vandalism, a hit-and-run collision, driving without a license and 
 making harassing phone calls. He appealed the decision to a higher court 
 but lost.\nKhalili remains heavily involved in workers’ compensation 
 clinics, something that would draw scrutiny under Medicare’s rules as a 
 fraud prevention measure. In the vacuum of such oversight in workers’ 
 compensation, prosecutors now are pursuing charges against Khalili.\nHe was 
 accused in February of insurance fraud for accepting kickbacks on behalf of 
 First Choice Healthcare Medical Group clinics in Los Angeles and Panorama 
 City. In exchange for the kickbacks, he directed staff at the clinics to 
 dispense expensive pain creams to injured workers, the case alleges.\nThe 
 charges against Khalili say he directed an attorney in 2009 to put the 
 clinic ownership in the name of a physician, but Khalili controls the bank 
 accounts. Attorney Malcolm McNeil, who advises First Choice, said Khalili 
 does not own the clinics.\nKhalili has not entered a plea in the case, and 
 his criminal attorney did not return calls for comment.\nFree the 
 data\n\nFrank Neuhauser, a UC Berkeley researcher who’s studied the 
 California workers’ compensation system for 25 years, says opening up 
 billing data would be politically difficult.\nCredit: UC Berkeley Institute 
 for the Study of Societal Issues\nLast summer, Medicare released millions 
 of records detailing the services and charges of doctors across the nation. 
 The federal agency billed it as a move “to promote better care, smarter 
 spending, and healthier people.”\nThe Medicare data identifies doctors’ 
 billing practices down to the specifictest or treatment.\nA flood of news 
 stories based on the data followed, identifying high-billing doctors who 
 also were in the crosshairs of law enforcement.\nAmong them was a Florida 
 physicianaccused in a Justice Department lawsuit of performing invasive 
 procedures to clean out seniors’ arteries – even if they didn’t need 
 it. Another top biller is accused of reaping millions for diagnosing 
 seniors with an eye malady that leads to blindness, whether or not they had 
 the ailment.\nNo such transparency effort sheds light on health care 
 spending in California’s workers’ compensation program. Public records 
 in workers’ comp cases are limited to the names of medical providers 
 seeking money in contested court cases.\nBarbara Wynn, a Rand Corp. expert 
 who was commissioned by the state to study health spending in its 
 workers’ comp program, has access to the data as a researcher. She said 
 making it available to the public could deter questionable practices: “It 
 could start fingering potential fraud situations.”\nYet the data she has 
 seen is riddled with gaps, she said. She said rules that allow the state to 
 fine insurers that fail to report data are seldom enforced.\n“If you’re 
 going to profile what’s happening, you’re only looking at half a 
 deck,” Wynn said. She added that California labor department officials 
 “have sanction authorities, and they need to exercise it. Texas does, 
 Florida does; they really come down on it.”\nCalifornia labor officials 
 estimated that about 20 percent of the billing data is missing but said 
 they are writing letters and following up with insurers to encourage them 
 to report all required data.\nSimilar data is used in Medicare to identify 
 aberrations and notify doctors when their treatment practices appear 
 unusual. It’s the kind of notice that two California physicians who ended 
 up testifying in a fraud proceeding could have used.\nDr. Javier Torres 
 testified that in his 17 years of performing nerve tests on patients, he 
 never did a “single fiber” nerve test.\nThat testimony came in a 2014 
 fraud case. Orange County prosecutors claim physician Sim Hoffman’s 
 office billed for more than $9 million worth of “single fiber EMG” 
 tests that it was not even equipped to perform.\nDuring the test, a 
 hair-thin needle is dipped into a muscle to detect the nerve jitters that 
 are the hallmark of a disease called myasthenia gravis, which causes 
 weakness and difficulty breathing. It’s believed to be a disease you’re 
 born with – not something you pick up at work or from doing heavy 
 labor.\nThat didn’t stop Hoffman’s office from billing for 18 such 
 procedures in Torres’ name, for a total of more than $8,000, according to 
 court testimony. Hoffman has pleaded not guilty to insurance fraud, and his 
 attorney said in a court filing that the charges against him are so vague 
 and voluminous that “he has no meaningful way to mount an adequate 
 defense.”\nOpening up billing data would be politically difficult, said 
 Frank Neuhauser, a UC Berkeley researcher who’s studied the California 
 workers’ compensation system for 25 years. Some doctors and attorneys for 
 injured workers could see their income fall if excessive care is reined 
 in.\nBut for workers who get questionable surgeries or treatments, and for 
 employers who foot the bill, he said, it would be the right thing to 
 do.\nHow California’s health care system for workers forgot about 
 fraud\nhttps://www.revealnews.org/…/how-californias-health-care-s…/\nTopics: 
 Health Care / Health Care Scams\nBy Christina Jewett / March 31, 2016 
 \ni\nThe history of fraud in the California medical system meant to help 
 injured workers goes back decades. And there are strong signs that the 
 latest wave of criminal prosecutions might not mark the final 
 chapter.\nRELATED\nProfiteering masquerades as medical care for injured 
 California workers\nThe 102-year-old system is built on a simple bargain. 
 Workers give up the right to sue for injuries sustained on the job. In 
 exchange, about 15 million people covered by workers’ compensation 
 insurance in California expect access to free and readily available medical 
 care.\nState officials focused on delivering care to workers neglected to 
 build safeguards into the system, according to Dale Banda, a former head of 
 enforcement for the California Department of Insurance.\n“You’re 
 dealing with a program that was designed from the beginning not to 
 incorporate fraud as a component,” he said.\nIt took nearly 80 years for 
 lawmakers to establish the California Department of Insurance’s Fraud 
 Assessment Commission, which collects money from workers’ compensation 
 insurers and distributes it to prosecutors who press the cases.\nThat was 
 1991. By then, the system had developed a culture of corruption.\nThe fraud 
 was so blatant in 1993 that James Little, then president of a workers’ 
 compensation insurance firm, worked with a colleague to pitch the story to 
 television outlets.\n“Primetime Live” wound up capturing footage of 
 “cappers,” people paid to recruit patients. They trolled unemployment 
 lines trying to lure laid-off workers to clinics. Journalists put hidden 
 cameras in a fake workers’ comp clinic and recorded jockeying for 
 kickbacks in exchange for patient referrals.\n\nIn 1993, “Primetime 
 Live” recorded “cappers,” people paid to recruit patients for 
 workers’ compensation clinics. The practice is illegal. \nCredit: 
 Primetime Live\nThe sham clinic’s leader, using the pseudonym Paul 
 Morgan, confessed on camera that he wanted to help clean up the system – 
 having participated in a half-billion dollars’ worth of fraud.\nHe 
 recalled that when he was in business, recruiters brought his clinic so 
 many uninjured workers that “we would be surprised and really didn’t 
 know what to do with a person who came through with a legitimate 
 injury.”\nLittle recalls the era: “It was way out of control.”\nAnd 
 it seemed to get even worse. The system costs more than doubled from $9.5 
 billion in 1995 to $25 billion in 2002.\nIn 2004, a state audit found 
 across-the-board shortcomings in state officials’ efforts to measure and 
 investigate workers’ compensation fraud.\nThat was when the new governor, 
 Arnold Schwarzenegger, aimed his star power squarely at the problem of 
 soaring workers’ compensation costs. He swept through Costco warehouse 
 stores from Burbank to Sacramento with TV cameras trailing him, warning 
 that the problem could force companies out of state.\nSchwarzenegger 
 brokered a reform deal with lawmakers that brought down costs, but it is 
 difficult to tell whether it had an impact on fraud as well. State 
 government leaders responsible for workers’ compensation long have 
 struggled to measure the medical fraud problem.\nThe state’s Department 
 of Insurance commissioned a 2008 study, which concluded that the state’s 
 employers were footing the bill for up to $1.3 billion a year in erroneous 
 payments. The report dealt with errors instead of fraud, it said, because 
 identifying fraud would mean proving criminal intentions.\nThe overall 
 “error rate” was about twice the current rate in Medicare and 
 Medicaid.\nMalcolm Sparrow, a Harvard University management professor, 
 created the method that California officials used to reach the conclusions. 
 He said in an interview that government officials must be willing to 
 measure fraud to control it – and then make key changes. The next step, 
 he said, is to conduct a follow-up study to see whether the errors are 
 falling off.\n“It takes a high degree of political courage to do a 
 measurement program rigorously,” Sparrow said. “You have to be prepared 
 to deal with the huge embarrassment” of failure.\nRATHER LISTEN TO THE 
 STORY?\nSubscribe to the Reveal podcast to get this and other 
 stories.\nCalifornia officials never followed up using the same 
 measurement, leaving no way to determine whether they have succeeded at 
 reducing errors. Instead, the Department of Industrial Relations 
 commissioned a study, unveiled last year, that used different methods to 
 examine medical spending in workers’ compensation.\nThat study still 
 found problems. Even though workers were not getting hurt worse or more 
 often on the job, medical costs had climbed $1.6 billion from 2007 to 
 2012.\nBarbara Wynn, a researcher with the Rand Corp., led that second 
 study. Her preliminary findings suggest one significant cost driver was the 
 overuse of MRI studies, particularly in Southern California. The MRIs, she 
 said, often were done too early in the course of medical treatment to be 
 clearly medically necessary.\nWynn’s discovery raises the specter that 
 some of those MRIs might have been part of a scam to drum up 
 business.\nIndictments unsealed in January show that two firms specializing 
 in MRIs were part of kickback schemes meant to guarantee a steady stream of 
 patients. Since 2007, those MRI firms have billed insurers more than $260 
 million for services and filed more than 50,000 demands for payment, 
 according to a Reveal analysis of state data.\nCharges in that kickback 
 case – dubbed “Operation Backlash” – mostly cover the years since 
 2012, when lawmakers passed another reform package. The new law added 
 layers of medical review over doctors’ requests for treatment. It also 
 took aim at middlemen who collect money on behalf of medical 
 providers.\nRecent cases in an FBI-led sting suggest that despite the legal 
 changes, fraud continues to flourish. A San Diego prosecutor who handled 
 one part of that case said it is merely a “small constellation in a 
 universe of workers’ comp fraud.”\n“This happens all over 
 California,” said Pedro Bernal, the San Diego County deputy district 
 attorney. “This is how it’s done.”\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/04/08/18785012.php
SUMMARY:2016 San Francisco Workers Memorial Day
LOCATION:ILWU Local 34 (next to AT&T Ballpark\n801 2nd St. San Francisco, California
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/04/08/18785012.php
DTSTART:20160429T020000Z
DTEND:20160429T040000Z
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR