Bay Area Business Owner Charged With 57 Underground Economy Violations by Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones
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- Published on Monday, 30 January 2012 16:47
Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones announced that Frances Ann Doherty, 51, of Millbrae was arraigned in San Francisco Superior Court for 57 felony counts related to alleged payroll theft and workers' compensation insurance premium fraud. Doherty was arrested January 26, 2012 and her bail has been set at $750,000. Doherty is the owner of Doherty Painting & Construction, a painting contracting company that was awarded numerous public contracts with the City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Unified School District and other public agencies. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón stated, “We intend to prove that over the course of three years the defendant underpaid her employees and pocketed over $600,000 that the City thought it was paying for those wages, and defrauded her workers' compensation insurance carriers out of over $100,000 in insurance premiums. This conduct not only victimizes workers who are desperately trying to make a living in a very tough economy, it also hurts the honest businesses that were unable to successfully compete for these projects which the defendant was able to underbid and win as a result of this scheme."
It was further alleged that Doherty Painting workers were underpaid, that fraudulent information was allegedly provided by Doherty to public agencies that were doing compliance audits, allegedly in an effort to conceal the prevailing wage violations and allegedly provided fraudulent employee payroll information to Redwood Fire & Casualty and Zurich Insurance companies from September 2006 through June 2009, which allegedly allowed her to pay lower workers' compensation insurance premiums to these carriers. This arrest is a result of a joint investigation headed by Investigators from the San Francisco County District Attorney's Office and Detectives from the California Department of Insurance (CDI). "This case is an excellent example of inter-agency collaboration," said Commissioner Jones. "The underground economy is a real threat to California's law-abiding businesses and owners. Rooting out these bad actors and the fraud they commit is a top priority of my Department." Read more.