PHONY CAR-CRASH SCAM NETS SOME 2 DOZEN ARRESTS.

Byline: JASON KANDEL Staff Writer

BURBANK -- A Santa Clarita man and his wife were among some two dozen Los Angeles-area residents arrested on suspicion of staging phony car crashes on Southland freeways and collecting up to $4 million in bogus insurance claims, state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi announced Thursday.

Local and state authorities, working on a task force in Operation Freeway Squat, busted what they called a major auto insurance fraud ring that has terrorized motorists around Southern California for more than two years.

``It is a classic example of exactly what we have to stop because it is dangerous. It has led to deaths here in Southern California,'' Garamendi said during a news conference overlooking the Golden State Freeway in Burbank. ``It is reprehensible to put lives in danger over the reckless pursuit of cash.''

Garamendi said the ring was involved in more than 125 incidents of a ``swoop and squat'' scam targeting elderly motorists, expensive cars and light-duty commercial vehicles.

He said suspects driving separate vehicles boxed a victim's car or truck into a lane where it was cut off and effectively forced to hit a culprit's vehicle in the rear. He said nobody was seriously injured in the collisions, which occurred on many L.A.-area freeways.

Authorities said the ring was led by Ramon Alfonso Zanoletti, 52, and his wife, Magdalena, 51, both of Santa Clarita, and by Clarence E. Franklin, 73, a chiropractor from Cathedral City.

Ramon Alfonso Zanoletti, working from a law office, is accused of paying people to stage collisions and getting attorneys to represent them in bogus injury claims for which they were referred as ``patients'' to Franklin's office for chiropractic treatments that were never delivered.

Magdalena Zanoletti, who worked as a clinic administrator, is accused of making phony medical forms available and billing insurance companies for services not rendered. Franklin is accused of signing the forms, indicating he performed examinations, treatments and consultations that he never did, investigators said.

The forms were used as tools to increase the potential settlement that insurance companies would pay, authorities said.

The Zanolettis and Franklin were arrested June 7 and are being held in jail in lieu of $1 million bail each.

Twenty other suspects were booked into the jail system with bail ranging from $30,000 to $60,000.

Authorities are still searching for another person suspected of being a ringleader, Constantino Guillen Pineda, 35, of Los Angeles.

jason.kandel(at)dailynews.com

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