Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-Will the chain-smoking habit of Los Angeles City Council president Herb Wesson lead to his eventual downfall?
I pose this question not in reference to the inherent danger of inhaling tobacco, but in the criminal sense of alleged insurance fraud.
While the FBI’s corruption investigation has finally seeped into local government channels and back rooms, to date, nobody has been charged with a crime. But while LA City Council’s embattled Lech-in-Residence Jose Huizar is rumored to have involved his family members in shady dealings with Chinese land developers, Wesson has long been rumored to prefer bag men. That’s why this excerpt from the website How Stuff Works caught my attention:
“He managed to create plausible deniability, removing himself enough from the (graft) so that no connections could be drawn between him and the crimes he authorized.”
The excerpt is not about Wesson, but it may just as well apply to him. In fact, it was written to explain why the FBI in 1931 only managed to convict mobster Al Capone of tax evasion, but not of his alleged major crimes, including murder.
Accordingly, the FBI would be wise to look at other elements of Wesson’s dealings, because they might be all it ever gets on him. Things like possible insurance and mail or wire fraud.
That’s where our old friend, David “Zuma Dogg” Saltsburg, the Venice street artist, political observer and winner of a Federal 1st Amendment lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles comes in. He says that Wesson admitted to him that he lied to his insurance carrier about being a non-smoker, which (if true) would have resulted in Wesson paying lower rates for health and life insurance, and lower co-pays, based on fraudulent assertions.
Zuma Dogg, an omnipresence at all things LA City Hall for well over a decade, traced the incident to a May 2008 event in which Wesson and then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa both appeared.
“Villar(aigosa) had a Koreatown event before a Council meeting. Herb was there. When it was over, I asked Herb, half-joking, if I can have a ride back (back to City Hall) instead of taking the bus. He said, ‘sure Zuma Dogg,’” the gadfly recalled. As they walked to where Wesson was parked, he said Wesson lit a cigarette and blurted, “Don’t tell anyone that I smoke because I put, 'non-smoker,' on my insurance policy.”
Zuma Dogg added, “I’ll take a lie detector test and sign a sworn affidavit. I’m 1,000% sure of this.”
The scenario is plausible because Wesson represented Koreatown, and Wesson’s profile on City Council was much lower at the time, as Eric Garcetti was still its president. Zuma Dogg points to his specific video of on YouTube to nail the date to on or about May 31, 2008. The 51-second mark of the short video shows Wesson present at the event.
The FBI may also wish to look into whether Wesson’s son, City Council Floor Director Justin Wesson, lied about his residence to his insurance carriers as well.
The younger Wesson, who was born in 1982, lists on his Los Angeles County voter registration that he resided at his parents address on Virginia Road from May 19, 2008 through October 11, 2018, a period of time during which he was 26 years of age through 36, and earned upward of $100,000 despite having a pregnant wife whose residence was in South Pasadena, among other locations. During this time, Justin Wesson voted in dozens of elections based on his parents’ address, but curiously did not change his voter registration until just hours prior to my public records request for those documents was filled on October 12, 2018.
The FBI should look at what address Justin Wesson used for his health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, car registration, driver’s license and financial documents, and compare them to one another, as well as against the records of his wife Alexis Marin, an aide to City Councilmember Nury Martinez.
Just days prior to the younger Wesson signing under penalty of perjury on his voter registration that he lived with his parents on Virginia Road starting on May 19, 2008, Discover Bank got a March 26, 2008 non-payment judgment for $1,913.78 against him, except those records show him living at his parents’ other address, on Bedford Avenue. Other records suggest someone by the same name using an address on S. Flower Street as his residence in April 2008. Justin Wesson did not respond to an offer to explain his conflicting residency claims.
(Note: this column was first to report last year that the senior Wessons, Herb and Fabian, in a separate matter, also lost a non-payment judgment to Discover Bank for $5,000, despite a household income approaching $500,000 a year.)
The younger Wesson’s conflicting addresses in early 2008 are almost as outlandish as the June 2005 voter registration records of his dad, which show that inside of one month he claimed to reside on Roberts Avenue in Culver City, and on West Adams Boulevard and Citrus Avenue within the City of LA.
The Wessons’ curious domicile claims could be untangled by the FBI in an afternoon. And what their financial and insurance records may not clarify might be indisputably proven by the same thing that caused the downfall of former LA City Councilmember Richard Alarcon: utility records.
At the end of the day, that might be all the FBI gets on them. That’s all…for today.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Join his mailing list or offer verifiable tips and story ideas at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
