By day, Israel Crastro was an Orange County prosecutor cracking down on violent gang members, sexual abusers, and corrupt officials.
In 2022, Mr. Claustro successfully won the election and secured an open judicial position.
For many years, he also operated a medical billing and health management company on the side. He now faces accusations that his Moonlighting was rife with fraud and was part of a long-running conspiracy with a Pasadena doctor, according to federal court records.
Kevin Tien Du, a doctor, agreed this month to plead guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and signing a false tax return, according to court records.
Mr. Do admitted to drafting the medical report submitted to and billed to the National Fund for Injured Workers and worked with a co-conspirator to include the names of other doctors in the records to implicate his involvement. I hid it.
Federal prosecutors did not name Mr. Clostro in court documents or charge him with a crime.
However, Doe’s plea agreement and the indictment filed against him include “Co-conspirator No. 1”, an OC prosecutor who will become a judge in 2022 and runs a health care company with his wife. It details how the plan was run. State court filings and public records, some of which were reported by the Orange County Register, suggest Mr. Clostro is an alleged “co-conspirator.”
Mr. Clostro’s lawyer, Paul S. Meyer, did not respond to written questions and told the Times that “it is too early to comment.”
The allegations have cast a shadow on a prominent member of the Orange County bar who grew up in trouble and built a career around a commitment to ethics.
“My childhood memory is of sleeping on the living room floor of the two-bedroom apartment in Pomona that I shared with my six siblings, my parents, and my uncle,” said 73% in the June primary. Claustro said during his 2022 judicial campaign before winning the vote.
Mr. Clostro said he was born in the United States to Mexican parents and was the first of his siblings to have a third-grade education. “My unique ability to connect with people, especially the less affluent in our communities, helps foster trust in America’s justice system,” he said.
It is unclear how Klostro met Doe.
Do was born in Saigon, Vietnam, moved to the United States as a teenager and graduated from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, according to state medical board records. He worked with psychiatric patients and ran rehabilitation clinics in Hawthorne and Beverly Hills before his career took a turn.
In 2003, Mr. Do pled guilty to aiding and abetting health care fraud in a scheme to submit false claims to Medi-Cal. He served one year in federal prison. In this plan, Do allowed a medical billing company to use his identity to bill him for services he did not provide, splitting the profits with the company and keeping 20% for himself.
In a plea deal this month, Doe said in recent years he worked with a Rancho Cucamonga-based organization called Liberty Medical Group to write reports on disabled patients submitted to the state to secure workers’ compensation benefits. admitted that he had done so.
Although Do held a medical license, his criminal record barred him from participating in the state’s workers’ compensation system. So Liberty Medical Group omitted Mr. Doe’s name from its report and listed other practitioners in his place.
There was another problem. Mr. Do admitted that “Co-conspirator #1” could not own a medical corporation because he did not have a medical license or related medical qualifications.
Thus, the suspicion of a conspiracy between these two men became serious, with almost no public fingerprints of the real perpetrators.
Prosecutors do not allege that Mr. Do charged for services he did not perform.
In his plea agreement, Do said that Liberty Medical Group had a uniquely powerful “de facto” owner whose alleged co-conspirators signed checks from Liberty and other doctors. He said he had “complete control” over Liberty, including hiring and hiring employees.
Claustro’s role at Liberty Medical Group is detailed in state court filings. In October, psychologist Nun Phan sued Liberty Medical, claiming he owed $100,000 for an evaluation done several years ago. In the lawsuit, Huang said he had exchanged correspondence with “Israel” about unpaid bills. The lawsuit also included email exchanges with the Claustros in which Phan said they were trying to collect “unpaid patient payments.”
Claustro responded in November 2023 that all lawsuits have been paid, saying, “The payment records are on file. Someone will retrieve them.” Liberty responded to Huang’s lawsuit. No response has been submitted.
In his plea agreement, Mr. Do claimed that his co-conspirators were the ones who planned for Mr. Do to prepare a report that included the names of other doctors and providers.
Prosecutors cited a check that Du received from Liberty on Aug. 4, 2020, that included a memo section for patient representatives, but that Liberty was not allowed to enter the state workers’ compensation program in June 2020. The report submitted to the hospital listed the name of another doctor as the author of the report. the prosecutor said.
The state has paid Liberty more than $3 million for these claims from Doe, including $1.3 million in 2019, $1.2 million in 2020 and $490,000 in 2021, according to court records. Includes $9,000. In 2022, the bill decreased to $141,000.
According to the plea agreement, Mr. Doe was paid more than $300,000 for his work, but more than $1.5 million “flowed” to a company controlled by “Co-conspirator No. 1” and his wife.
That company was not listed in the plea agreement, but public records show it is Valley Health Care Management. In his 2022 income disclosure as a judge candidate, Clostro listed Valley Health Inc. publicly, but said his spouse owns the company. Claustro was named CEO of Valley Healthcare in 2017, according to state corporate filings. In her lawsuit, Huang also attached a copy of a contract that lists Valley Health as Liberty’s “manager.”
As part of his guilty plea, which is scheduled to be formally entered on January 3, Mr. Do also admitted that he failed to report income from Liberty Medical to the Internal Revenue Service.
Mr. Clostro continues to be a judge in the Family Law Division of the OC Superior Court. His term is scheduled to end in 2029, but a court spokesperson said he could not answer questions about the matter.
“The OC Superior Court is bound by a code of ethics that does not permit discussion of such matters, whether under the jurisdiction of another court, tribunal, or law enforcement agency,” the spokesperson said. Kostas Karaitsidis said.
