\u201cDo I close my eyes to the district attorney coming in here saying there may be billions of dollars of fraud occurring?\u201d Riff asked.<\/p>\n
![\"Judge](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781564409_252_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Judge Lawrence P. Riff, who is overseeing the bulk of L.A. County\u2019s sex abuse cases, presides over a court hearing in February.<\/p>\n
(Myung J. Chun \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Andy Baum, outside counsel for the county, skirted around taking a position on the delay, saying plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys warned him that the settlement was at risk of falling apart. The county has long viewed the $4-billion payout as a bargain compared to what it would cost to take the cases to trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was told that a number of plaintiffs would seek to blow up the settlement,\u201d Baum said, adding that further delays would create a \u201cvery significant economic crisis potential.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hochman\u2019s claim of rampant fraud sparked fury among some victims and their lawyers, who said the district attorney\u2019s shocking statistics were inflammatory and presented without \u201ca scintilla of supporting evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riff said the main players in the settlement, himself included, had been kept in the dark about Hochman\u2019s investigation. \u201cWe don\u2019t really know what he has,\u201d the judge said. <\/p>\n
\u201cShouldn\u2019t he tell us?\u201d countered Boris Treyzon, an attorney whose firm represents about 1,700 clients.<\/p>\n
Hochman said he had access to unspecified databases that suggested the vast majority of cases have \u201cfraud indicators,\u201d though he said he would only detail specifics in a private meeting with the judge. At a \u201c20,000-foot level,\u201d Hochman said, the databases available to his office suggested a vast majority of plaintiffs were never housed in the facilities where they said they were abused.<\/p>\n
The county had appointed two Superior Court judges to review the claims for fraud<\/a>, but Hochman said he believed the vetting that could be conducted by criminal prosecutors in his office was \u201cfar superior.\u201d<\/p>\n Under state law, California counties are required to destroy many criminal records for juveniles, leaving the county with almost no visibility into who was in their facilities decades ago. Some attorneys pushed back on the concept that L.A. County prosecutors had unique access to records, arguing that Hochman\u2019s data have proved \u201cimperfect.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe information is largely gone,\u201d said Boucher, noting that one of his clients who ended up on the D.A.\u2019s fraud list was, in fact, at the children\u2019s shelter where they claimed they were abused, according to school transcripts. \u201c<\/p>\n Steven Krueger, 63, said his was one of the cases that was flagged as fraudulent by the district attorney in November because they didn\u2019t have records of him in the county facility. He said he was amazed to see prosecutors come after him rather than the men he alleged molested him as a kid at MacLaren Children\u2019s Center <\/a> and a juvenile hall where he was sent after he stole a skateboard.<\/p>\n \u201cI ain\u2019t no fraudster,\u201d he said. \u201cYou think you\u2019re coming to the finish line, and they move the finish line back further.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the first tranche of money from Los Angeles County\u2019s $4-billion sex abuse settlement scheduled to hit victims\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1052,1436,3409,8533,166,120530,147104,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,6826,346,76472,1437,147103,5675,2601],"class_list":["post-361984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-attorney","tag-case","tag-child","tag-client","tag-county","tag-fake-claim","tag-horrific-abuse","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-nathan-hochman","tag-office","tag-payout","tag-plaintiff","tag-riff","tag-settlement","tag-victim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}