| A West Hills man was sentenced Thursday to 29 days in county jail and three years’ probation after pleading guilty to one count of insurance fraud for failing to report employee income in order to pay lower premiums on his air-conditioning company’s workers’ compensation policy. Officials with the California Department of Insurance said Douglas Lambert, 48, did not report or under-reported employee income to Clarendon National Insurance Co. from 2006 to 2009 for Lambert Air Conditioning, a company he owned and operated in Visalia, near Fresno in Northern California. “Fraud is a multimillion-dollar enterprise, which costs consumers over $210 million annually,” said Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones in a statement. “Lambert cheated both Clarendon National and the State of California out of over $110,000, and by doing so passed the cost of his fraud onto consumers across the state,” Lambert was living and working in Tulare County at the time the initial complaint was filed with the Department of Insurance and was prosecuted in Northern California. Authorities said he filed at least one workers’ compensation claim for an employee’s injury during the time frame of the investigation even though he was not paying insurance on the employee’s wages. He was ordered to pay $110,381 in restitution and will serve his sentence in Los Angeles County jail. While he was living up north, a spokesman for the department said he... |
