LB dock worker gets prison for billing health plan for prostitutes

A Long Beach dock worker was sentenced Tuesday to six months in prison, followed by six months in home confinement for allowing phony claims to be submitted to his labor union’s health plan for the use of prostitutes under the guise of chiropractic services.

Cameron Rahm, 39, of Pico Rivera, was also sentenced to two years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of $30,243, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Rahm pleaded guilty in January to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Rahm was among nine defendants — seven of them dock workers at the Port of Long Beach — who were charged last year for allowing more than $2.1 million in fraudulent claims to be submitted to their union’s health insurance plan for sexual services or for physical therapy that never was provided.

Some of the false claims were filed using the names of dock workers’ family members, including spouses and children.

The scheme’s ringleader Sara Victoria, 46, of San Pedro, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and aggravated identity theft and was sentenced in May to 27 months behind bars. She was also ordered to pay $551,810 in restitution.

Victoria admitted to owning three businesses between 2017 and 2021 that provided sexual services as well as chiropractic and acupuncture treatments.

Knowing that longshoremen and others involved in the shipping industry in Long Beach had health insurance under the International Longshore and Warehouse Union-Pacific Maritime Association benefit plan that generally covered all chiropractic services without a deductible, co-pay or out-of-pocket expenses, Victoria offered the dock workers cash kickbacks or sexual services in exchange for authorization to submit false claims for services not actually rendered, federal prosecutors said.

Victoria hired prostitutes at her companies and recruited them through referrals and from strip clubs in the Long Beach area, according to prosecutors.

Rahm was one of the customers of Victoria’s businesses and agreed to have her submit to the ILWU-PMA plan fraudulent claims, sometimes under his wife’s name, for prostitution services, according to his plea agreement filed in Los Angeles federal court.

Between January 2017 and April 2021, Victoria submitted about $178,495 in fraudulent claims to the ILWU-PMA plan for services sometimes supposedly rendered to Rahm’s wife, M.J. — who is also covered but did not know of the billing — for which the plan paid about $30,243, Rahm admitted.

“As defendant knew, those billed services were never, in fact, provided to M.J., and defendant intended to cause a loss to the ILWU-PMA plan of more than $150,000,” prosecutors wrote in the agreement.

All nine defendants have filed plea agreements in the case, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

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