Full story in the Los Angeles Times

By Rebecca Ellis

Sereen Banna said the partners of Downtown LA Law Group called her “Erin Brockovich” for her work helping hundreds sue over noxious fumes spewing out of a landfill in northern Los Angeles County.

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But in early 2024, Banna said, she discovered a troubling trend in some of the firm’s most lucrative cases: Clients who claimed they were paid before joining lawsuits.

On Dec. 16, Banna sued Downtown LA Law Group, also known as DTLA, stating the firm failed to address her complaints about “illegal solicitation, as well as deceptive and unethical practices aimed at persuading individuals to become clients through misrepresentations.”

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The Times reported in the fall that nine of the firm’s clients who sued over sex abuse in L.A. County facilities said recruiters paid them to file a lawsuit, including four who said they were told to fabricate claims. The L.A. County district attorney’s office is now conducting a probe into the allegations.

With the investigation pending, questions have lingered about how DTLA managed to amass so many plaintiffs so quickly. The Times spoke to more than 40 of the firm’s clients and 10 former employees, many of whom described aggressive tactics to bring in new clients and reap profits stretching back years.

More than a dozen people represented by DTLA in personal injury cases said they were recruited at a crisis point in their lives with promises of massive payouts and pressured into expensive surgeries that attorneys said would make their case more valuable. The more medical procedures, they were told, the more damages attorneys could claim.

At the end, some clients say, they were left with a fraction of what they were promised.

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Banna said she resigned from DTLA in October 2024, around the time the firm began pursuing a new cohort of clients: human trafficking victims who’d been abused in hotels.

Banna said one of her colleagues, an intake coordinator, told her a man named Kevin Johnson had paid one sex worker $20 to come into the office.

Over the last two years, five ex-workers told The Times, Johnson became an increasingly common sight at the firm as he started shepherding in clients he’d found to sue over sex abuse in the juvenile halls and the Eaton fire. Like most former employees, the ex-workers requested anonymity, fearing professional retaliation.

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Nevada Barker and Austin Beagle, two former DTLA clients, previously told The Times a man named Kevin, whose last name they didn’t know, paid them $100 each in DTLA’s office after they made false claims of sex abuse. Barker identified Johnson through pictures as the man who paid her.

The couple said they were under the impression they were being compensated to be actors in a movie. The firm later asked the court to dismiss their lawsuits.

“He said he worked for a referral service and the lawsuit needed enough participants to go through,” said Beagle. “He didn’t work for the law office.”

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Banna said in an interview that she later learned some clients for the landfill cases had been receiving gift cards to sign petitions at box stores in the area and those names later appeared on signed retainers even though clients were adamant they never signed up for a lawsuit. She accused the firm in her lawsuit of “providing gift cards, money gifts, and similar incentives in exchange for signatures.”

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“A lot of these people were completely unaware of what they were signing up for,” the former case manager said.

Surgeries and promises of ‘lottery money’

Three former case managers, who worked as liaisons between clients and attorneys, described the same modus operandi at DTLA: Sign up personal injury clients, then get them to agree to surgeries.

The more surgeries, they were told, the more profit, as it would make the case more valuable by allowing lawyers to claim higher medical damages.

The case managers said partners pushed surgeries and would give bonuses when clients went under the knife. Doctors — who stood to benefit by being able to bill for the procedures — would have gifts dropped off at the office, the ex-employees said.

The firm said any allegations of unethical practices were the result of “disgruntled former employees … who have ulterior self-serving motives.”

The case managers reported getting $500 checks from the firm when they got a client to agree to a surgery — often with the word “bonus” in the memo. The Times viewed one of these “bonus” checks, which the former employee said was for a client’s skin graft.

If they didn’t convince their clients to get surgeries, the former case managers said they feared losing their job. Yaghoubtil would ask case managers to send him a list of their surgeries at the end of the month, according to messages viewed by The Times.

“Our sx numbers for the month of May were very low,” said Yaghoubtil in a June 3 Teams message to 64 staff members, using an abbreviation for surgery. “Many were unable to produce even a single procedure… this is not acceptable.”

“How can you go an entire month and not have at least one of your cases worked up?” he continued. “It does not go un-noticed and will be letting go of those who are not trying hard enough.”

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Jacqueline McClelland, 60, said she was assured “lottery money” by a DTLA attorney in July 2018 after she slipped in a puddle of oil in a Willowbrook shopping plaza.

The insurer for the plaza called her up and offered her $1 million if she didn’t lawyer up, she said. But she said her DTLA attorney promised they could get her far more — as long as she went to all the doctors they recommended. She turned the insurer down.

Her case settled for $350,000.

It was not even close to enough to pay for the half-million in fees she said she’d racked up, primarily from going to doctors. She said she is still in excruciating back pain from her surgery.

DTLA took 46% of the settlement and sent the rest of the money to a judge to decide how to divvy between her and the 31 doctors, clinics and loan companies she owes, according to a court record filed on behalf of DTLA to determine the distribution. A volunteer at a Watts high school, McClelland has spent a year lawyerless in court fighting for any bit of it she can get.

“Is someone helping you?” asked Judge Gary Tanaka at a Dec. 17 hearing in his Torrance courtroom where she had been appearing with such regularity that the clerk knows her by first name.

“No one. Sorry, your honor, no one has helped me at all,” said McClelland, standing in a court proceeding she said repeatedly she did not understand. “Downtown LA Law just gave me to the wolves.”

“I would agree with that,” said Scott Meehan, an attorney representing one of the doctors fighting her for her settlement money.

DTLA said it could not comment on privileged conversations with McClelland. The firm said in a statement that all medical providers had legitimate liens that entitled them to money from the client’s settlement, including McClelland’s.

The Times found court records for more than 60 DTLA clients who had costs, typically medical bills, that ended up being more than their settlement. In those cases, DTLA couldn’t convince the doctors to reduce fees, and the attorney would hand the remaining money over to let the court decide how to divvy it up among everyone who needed to be paid.

But the lawyers get their cut — in some cases, more than three-quarters of the settlement, according to lawsuits filed on the firm’s behalf to determine who gets the remaining money.

After he was beaten by a Santa Monica security guard, David Villatoro, a 33-year-old construction worker, said a DTLA attorney told him he could get half a million easy, probably double that. But only if he went to a litany of doctors’ appointments, including a neck surgery.

It would mean losing his construction job and going on disability. But he claims his attorney said the surgery would make the case more valuable.

“That’s where the big bucks come in,” he recalled the attorney saying.

The big bucks never came.

Instead, months after the case settled, Villatoro got an email telling him not to contact the firm anymore about his case. Attorneys had taken 58% of his settlement money — about $72,000 — and he would have to go to court to fight for a cut of what was left along with the doctors.

He said he still can’t turn his head fully to the right.

“I’m just so confused,” he said. “I was so naive. It was my first time ever, ever, ever getting a lawyer.”

Laura Stephenson, a 57-year-old baker, was told by her DTLA attorney that her slip-and-fall in her Menifee cul-de-sac could net millions. But she would need to do a shoulder surgery.

She hesitated. It would mean too much time away from her bakery and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do it. The attorney convinced her by offering her a loan for $10,000, she said.

More than four years after the fall, she has received no money and can’t fully move her arm. The firm took 77% of her $175,000 settlement, according to a court filing to decide how to distribute the money. The rest went to the court to distribute, and she is still fighting to get a portion.

“I am living this nightmare,” said Stephenson, one of eight people The Times spoke with who said they filed a complaint with the State Bar.

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Uber, a common target of DTLA, sued the firm and one of the main surgeons used by clients, Greg Khounganian, last summer for racketeering, alleging the firm had “side agreements” with him to inflate medical bills for unnecessary procedures. Uber’s lawsuit alleged that many patients underwent an unnecessary spinal fusion that takes months to recover from in order to get a larger settlement.

In some cases, Uber alleged, Khounganian inflated the bills by as much as 640%. If the case didn’t settle for much, the lawsuit stated, Khounganian would agree to dramatically reduce their liens.

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DTLA clients said the firm would often insist on sending them to specific L.A. doctors even if they lived in a different county, or, in some cases, a different state.

Christy Strickland, who had a case over a fall that occurred while working for the delivery app Instacart, said the firm insisted L.A. doctors were cheaper than those in Texas. So she said they flew her in from Houston and once gave her gas money to drive, putting her up in a hotel for two weeks to recuperate along with two of her children.

Those travel expenses would total more than $10,000 — including two $482 Uber rides, according to a breakdown. She said she was never told those travel costs would be coming out of her money.

“YOU AND YOUR DOCTOR advised me to get these surgeries and I have told you that I am still in pain even more since the surgery,” she emailed Yaghoubtil in July 2023. “Do you know how it feels to wake up in the morning and your back hurts so bad all you can do is just lay there until it subsides?”

In November, Yaghoubtil, speaking on a podcast episode called “Lawyering With Empathy,” emphasized his focus was never high-dollar verdicts. The well-being of clients, he said, always came before profit.

“We love a client,” he said. “If we have to, we’ll go down fighting with them.”