In 2009, convicted felon Robert Langley (a.k.a “Bobby”) and Navesia Samuels thought they'd concocted a foolproof criminal plan in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
The pair invented imaginary businesses, imaginary employees, imaginary payrolls, and then abused American Family Life Assurance Company (AFLAC) and government disability coffers with fraudulent unemployment claims.
With the aid of the FBI, California Department of Insurance and the inspector general at the Social Security Administration, a special agent with the United States Department of Labor assigned to probe labor racketeering unraveled the conspiracy and filed charges last year.
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Langley, who was born in 1965, eventually signed a guilty plea and hoped
for a sentence of one year–a punishment approved by a federal
prosecutor inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse.
But this month, U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna apparently wasn't in the mood for any sweetheart deal.
According
to court records, Selna decided that Langley, a self-employed auto broker who was also convicted of fraud in 1992, deserved a tougher punishment: 21 months in
prison.
The swindler must also pay more than $113,000 in restitution.
Samuels,
the accomplice who was born in 1979, pleaded guilty first and, instead
of being sent to prison, is attending a criminal diversion program,
according to court records.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.