Jury selection began Thursday in the trial of a businessman accused of conspiring with a Temecula doctor to perpetrate a $3 million money laundering scheme tied to the procurement of medical equipment.
Sammy Ciling, 53, of Temecula, could face more than 20 years in prison if convicted of fraudulently obtaining loans for the equipment that prosecutors allege was never acquired. His codefendant, 52-year-old Dr. Donald Woo Lee of Newport Beach, who has offices in Temecula, is expected to go on trial separately in October.
Ciling is charged with 17 counts of money laundering and six counts of grand theft, with multiple sentence-enhancing white collar crime allegations. He and Lee are each free on $150,000 bonds.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Charles Koosed summoned several panels of prospective jurors to the Riverside Hall of Justice Thursday morning to begin screening prospects as to their availability and qualifications.
The District Attorney’s Office alleges that between December 2009 and October 2011, Woo and Ciling conspired to obtain loans from Wells Fargo and Zions Bank that they never intended to use for the purposes stated.
Lee was listed as the loan recipient, seeking funds to purchase MRI machines, a CT scanner and an X-ray machine, according to court papers.
The defendant received a total $3.27 million. But according to the D.A.’s office, the money was laundered through companies owned by Ciling, including Extreme Green Medical and Fallbrook Diagnostics.
Investigators discovered that Extreme Green Medical existed only on paper but was named as the entity from which Lee intended to purchase most of the imaging units, prosecutors said. In several instances, the D.A.’s office uncovered evidence that units listed in loan documents had already been bought and had been in use for years, according to court papers.
The investigation also pointed to occasions on which Lee allegedly made down-payment obligations that were never fulfilled. The obligations were to Ciling’s companies, prosecutors allege.
Two men who performed contract work for Ciling, Robert J. Montoya and Alan F. Rizzone, were implicated in the alleged scam. Both men pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges three years ago and were sentenced to terms of probation spanning 36 months.
Wells Fargo and Zions initiated civil proceedings against Lee when they didn’t receive monthly payments to cover their loans to the doctor, culminating in the criminal probe and the filing of a complaint against the defendants in December 2014.