On Friday, May 11, at 1:26 a.m. officers of the Santa Monica Police Department went to the emergency room at Saint John’s Hospital after they had received a report of a man who was attempting to commit health care fraud.
When the officers arrived at the scene they spoke with the social worker who had summoned them and discovered what had happened.
The social worker told the officers that she had been interviewing the suspect after he had entered the hospital looking for “medical services.”
The social worker said that suspicions were aroused when documentation in a name other than the one that the suspect had given was found upon his person. It was then that the social worker had called the police.
The officers investigated and discovered that this individual possessed a forged California Driver’s License and Social Security Card. Furthermore the officers learned that this man had used the forged information to obtain similar “medical services” from a clinic in Venice, and was now trying to do the same thing at Saint John’s.
The officers arrested this man after the hospital staff cleared him of any medical condition, and he was charged with forgery and forging an official seal.
The bail for this 36-year-old Inglewood resident was set at $20,000.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of the Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
