After recklessly submitting fraudulent insurance claims to multiple insurers, one LosAngeles-area attorney has now been sentenced to formal probationand ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars inrestitution.

Between 2003 and 2007, Susana Ragos Chung, 60, participated in asophisticated organized auto fraud crime ring. The ring wasinitially discovered in 2004 by the California Department of Insurance (CDI) Urban Auto Fraud TaskForce in the fraud division of its Benicia Regional Office, whichinitiated an investigation known as “Phantom Menace” into organized autoinsurance fraud in the Bay Area in 2003.

Members of the task force went undercover in November of 2004and were solicited to participate in staged collisions by a varietyof law offices, including one owned and operated by Chung. Chung'sparticipation included submitting claims for suspects stagingcollisions for profit and representing “injured” claimants. Many ofthese “claimants,” however, had never met Chung or even knew thatthey had an attorney.

The efforts of the task force have led to the conviction ofnearly 100 people, including 90 staged collision participants andthree chiropractors. Many of the participants admitted thatno accident had ever actually occurred.

Chung has agreed to place herself on inactive status with theCalifornia State Bar as the investigation continues, from whichdisbarment may result. She must pay $117,561 in restitution toinsurance companies and $235,123 to the state restitution fund, aswell as serve five years of formal probation.