Monday, November 26, 2012
Page 3
City Council May Engage Outside Attorneys to Draft Laws, Chief Deputy City Attorney Says
By a MetNews Staff Writer
An attorney and former construction manager for Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena pled guilty on Wednesday to federal mail fraud charges, according to a Department of Justice press release.
John Haw, 52, of Aliso Viejo, appeared before U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson of the Central District of California and admitted to two counts of mail fraud and participating in an illegal kickback scheme.
According to the release, the hospital was completing a large-scale construction project involving the renovation and expansion of its Emergency Department, when it hired Haw to perform legal and consulting services. Between March 2008 and April 2009, Huntington paid Haw nearly $350,000 at a rate of up to $275 an hour.
During this same period, Haw paid kickbacks of more than $56,000 to Cyrus Engineering, an entity controlled by David Hamedany, Huntington’s director of construction. The payments were in exchange for promises that Haw would continue to receive work and that Hamedany would try to get more billable hours for Haw.
Per the release, Haw is the fourth person to be convicted in connection with kickbacks and related schemes that have victimized Huntington Memorial Hospital. The others were Hamedany, who was sentenced to three years in prison and $4.8 million in restitution in January; Alexander Svidler, a San Francisco-based construction executive who pled guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced to 18 months in prison; and Tony Hamedany, the brother of David Hamedany, is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 14 in connection with a kickback scheme involving Columbus Manufacturing, Inc., a San Francisco-based company where Tony Hamedany served as director of engineering.
Anderson is scheduled to sentence Haw on Feb. 4. As a result of his guilty plea, Haw faces a maximum statutory sentence of 40 years in federal prison, although the plea agreement contemplates a sentence of approximately one year.
State Bar records show that Haw, a graduate of Western State University College of Law, was admitted to the State Bar in 1998 and was suspended in July for failure to pay dues and failure to comply with MCLE requirements. His conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude could result in summary disbarment.
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