3-Year Term for Workers’ Comp Fraud

A Mission Viejo woman who filed workers’ compensation claims on six jobs over seven years was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for insurance fraud. Edith Jane Almada, 50, was allowed by Orange County Superior Court Judge James K. Turner to remain free for two weeks to get her affairs in order before reporting to prison. Almada was convicted in October on five felony counts stemming from a workers’ compensation claim she filed in 1990 while working at Marine National Bank in Irvine. She had said she injured her shoulder, and continued to seek treatments for about three years. However, jurors decided that in getting treatments, she misrepresented her history four times to maximize her benefits. The claim was the sixth that she had filed since 1983--each within two months of taking a new job, said Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Doug Brannan. The “pattern of recurring claims” was put in evidence at trial, he said, and contributed to her lengthy sentence. Almada couldn’t be reached for comment.