Warrant Out for Lakeland Motel Owner

Workers’ compensation fraud is one of a handful of charges being leveled by the Florida State Attorney’s Office against Amir H. Khimani, owner of the Crossroads Motor Lodge in Lakeland, Fla.

Killings, arson and price-gouging charges had been filed against the hotel owner before it was discovered the motel owes more than $100,000 in back taxes, and according to the State Attorney’s Office, ignored orders in April to stop operating.

Khimani received a DFS “Stop Work Order” April 1 after a detective found Sidney DeHate repairing the motel’s roof while the motel had no workers’ compensation information on file for him. DeHate told an investigator he’d been repairing the roof in exchange for a free room and $10 a day.

Khimani was ordered to stop operating the motel until the department lifted the order. But DeHate was working on the roof four days later and again April 11.

Investigators also found several other motel boarders like DeHate working around the motel in exchange for room and board, the report said.

When investigators confronted Khimani, he told them he was not the motel’s owner and that it was operated by a company in Canada.

The Lakeland Ledger quoted a State Attorney’s Office report indicating that two arrest warrants have been issued for Khimani, the motel’s president and manager, for two counts of willful intent to evade paying tax and one count of using tax money declared as state funds.

State of Georgia and Atlanta investigators closed down an insurance scam in which 10 workers at the James Walker Sewer Construction and Maintenance Facility filed disability claims for non-existent injuries.

Investigators charged the city employees with felony insurance fraud. Three employees were arrested during a late-morning raid at the facility near Grant Park, where all 10 worked.

Janet Ward, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Watershed Management, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution two of those charged were supervisors and the rest were members of sewer maintenance crews working out of the facility.

State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine said the nine men and one woman all filed claims against supplemental disability policies issued by Columbus-based Aflac, while still reporting for their city jobs.

More than $40,000 was paid to seven of the employees before Aflac started getting suspicious and denied some of those payments.