John S. Haw, Attorney Who Paid Kickbacks in Hospital Construction Scheme, Geta a Year

Attorney John S. Haw of Aliso Viejo was sentenced Monday to a year of confinement–to be split between a halfway house and home detention–for his role in an illegal kickback scheme involving construction work at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena.

The 52-year-old pleaded guilty in federal court in November to a pair of mail fraud counts.

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Haw performed legal and consulting services while the hospital was completing a construction project involving the expansion of its emergency department, work that paid him as much as $275 per hour, according to the U.S. Attorney's office, which tracked billings of nearly $350,000 from March 2008 through April 2009.

During the same period, Haw paid David Hamedany, Huntington's then-director of construction, kickbacks totaling $56,000 to continue to receive legal work from the hospital. Hamedany was sentenced in January 2012 to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay $4.8 million in restitution.

The government also won convictions for a parallel kickback scheme run by David's brother, Tony Hamedany, in San Francisco. He was sentenced in April to 20 months behind bars in connection with kickbacks he received as director of engineering at Columbus Manufacturing. Alexander Svidler, a San Francisco-based construction executive who pleaded guilty to mail fraud in the case, was sentenced last October to a year and a half in prison.

The Hamedany's co-mingled the proceeds from their kickback schemes in accounts both had access to, according to prosecutors.

Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!

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