DealBook: As Unit Pleads Guilty, R.B.S. to Pay $612 Million Over Rate Rigging

LONDON – The Royal Bank of Scotland on Wednesday struck a combined $612 million settlement with American and British authorities over accusations that it manipulated interest rates, the latest case to emerge from a broad international investigation.

In an embarrassing blow to the bank, its Japanese subsidiary also pleaded guilty to criminal wrongdoing in its settlement with the Justice Department. The R.B.S. subsidiary, a hub of rate-rigging activity, agreed to a single count of felony wire fraud to settle the case.

The settlement reflects the Justice Department’s renewed vigor for punishing banks ensnared in the rate manipulation case. In December, a Japanese subsidiary of UBS pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud as part of a larger settlement, representing the first unit of a big bank to agree to criminal charges in more than a decade.

As authorities built the R.B.S. case, they seized on a series of incriminating yet colorful e-mails that highlighted an effort to influence the rate-setting process, a plot that spanned multiple currencies and countries from 2006 to 2010. One senior trader expressed disbelief at reaping lucrative profits from the scheme, saying “it’s just amazing” how rate “fixing can make you that much money,” according to the government’s complaint. Another trader, after pressuring a colleague to submit a certain rate, offered a reward of sorts: “I would come over there and make love to you.”

In a statement on Wednesday, the American regulator leading the case slammed the bank for manipulating benchmarks like the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor. The regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, noted that R.B.S. employees “aided and abetted” other banks in the rate-rigging scheme and continued to run afoul of the law, though more covertly, even after learning of a federal investigation.

“The public is deprived of an honest benchmark interest rate when a group of traders sits around a desk for years falsely spinning their bank’s Libor submissions, trying to manufacture winning trades. That’s what happened at R.B.S.,” David Meister, the enforcement director of the commission, said in the statement.

Libor Explained

The settlement represents the latest setback for Royal Bank of Scotland, which has struggled to shake the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis. The British firm already has put aside $2.7 billion to compensate customers who were inappropriately sold loan insurance over recent years. On Jan. 31, British regulators also called on the bank and other local rivals to review the sale of interest-rate hedging products after more than 90 percent of a sample were found to have been sold improperly.

The broader rate-rigging case has centered on how much the Royal Bank of Scotland and a dozen other banks, including Citigroup and HSBC, charge each other for loans. Such benchmarks, including Libor, help determine the borrowing costs for trillions of dollars in financial products like corporate loans, mortgages and credit cards.

But the Royal Bank of Scotland, like many of its competitors, corrupted the process. Government complaints filed over the last year outlined a scheme in which banks reported false rates to lift trading profits and deflect concerns about their health during the crisis.

Authorities filed the first Libor case in June, extracting a $450 million settlement with the British bank Barclays. In December, UBS agreed to a record $1.5 billion settlement with European regulators, the Justice Department and the American regulator that opened the case, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Justice Department’s criminal division, which secured the guilty plea from the bank’s Japanese unit, also filed criminal charges against two former UBS traders.

Some of the world’s largest financial institutions remain caught in the cross hairs of the case. Deutsche Bank has set aside an undisclosed amount to cover potential penalties.

While foreign banks have received the brunt of the scrutiny to date, an American institution could be among the next to settle. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase are under investigation.

The Royal Bank of Scotland case represents the second-largest fine levied in the multiyear investigation into rate manipulation.

The Justice Department imposed a $150 million fine as part of a deferred-prosecution agreement with R.B.S., while the trading commission’s financial penalty reached $325 million. The Financial Services Authority, the British regulator, also levied a £87.5 million ($137 million) fine against the firm, one of the largest financial penalties ever from British authorities.

R.B.S., based in Edinburgh, had aimed to avert the guilty plea for its Japanese subsidiary. But the Justice Department’s criminal division declined to back down, and the bank had little leverage to push back. If it had balked at a plea deal, the Justice Department could have moved to indict the subsidiary.

“Like with Barclays and UBS, the settlement with R.B.S. is much more than a slap on the wrist,” said Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the trading commission who is a critic of soft fines on big banks.

In the wake of the settlement, Royal Bank of Scotland is shaking up its management team as it moves to repair its bruised image. John Hourican, the firm’s investment banking chief, resigned on Wednesday, and agreed to forgo some of his past compensation.

Royal Bank of Scotland, in which the government holds an 82 percent stake after providing a $73 billion bailout in 2008, also plans to claw back bonuses totaling $471 million to help pay for the rate-rigging penalty.

“We condemn the behavior of the individuals who sought to influence some Libor currency settings at our bank from 2006 to 2010. There is no place at R.B.S. for such behavior,” Stephen Hester, the bank’s chief executive, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Libor manipulation is an extreme example of a selfish and self-serving culture that took hold in parts of the banking industry during the financial boom.”

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Friends, investigators seek answers in killing of O.C. couple

They met in college, two highly regarded basketball players who seemed to have the same winning touch on the court and off.

After blazing through high school and college with her outside shot, Monica Quan became the assistant women's basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton. Keith Lawrence, whose highlight shots are still there on his college website, became a campus officer at USC.

Now police in Irvine are scrambling for an explanation — and friends are looking for a way to express their shock — after Quan and Lawrence were found shot to death in their parked car on the top floor of a parking structure in an upscale, high-security condominium complex near UC Irvine.

The two had just announced their engagement and had recently moved into a condominium complex near Concordia University, where they played basketball and had gone on to earn their degrees.

Late Sunday, after a passerby noticed two people in the parked car, police said they found Lawrence slumped in the driver's side of his white Kia. Quan was next to him, also dead. The couple were shot multiple times, and authorities said they have tentatively ruled out the possibility of it being a murder-suicide or motivated by robbery. Nothing in the car, police said, seemed to be disturbed.

The couple's friends and family said they were shaken by the violent deaths of two people who seemed to have so much to offer.

Quan was a 2002 graduate of Walnut High School in the San Gabriel Valley, where she set school records for the most three-pointers in a season and a game. She played at Long Beach State and at Concordia, where she graduated in 2007. She went on to earn a master's degree before becoming the assistant coach at Fullerton.

Quan's father was the first Chinese American captain in the LAPD, and went on to become police chief at Cal Poly Pomona.

Quan was known for pulling students aside to offer encouragement, said Megan Richardson, a former player. Marcia Foster, the head basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton, described her assistant as a special person — "bright, passionate and empowering," she said.

Quan shared a love of basketball with her fiancee, Lawrence, whom she met at Concordia.

He too had been a standout basketball player, starting at Moorpark High, where he played point guard and shooting guard, said Tim Bednar, who coached Lawrence.

Bednar said that Lawrence, who came from a family of athletes, was talented, yet quiet and humble. After Lawrence graduated in 2003, he continued to participate in summer youth camps

When he returned for the camps, Bednar said, he was known as the "best basketball player that ever came through" the school.

"He was awesome with the kids," Bednar said. "They all wanted to be around Keith Lawrence."

Bednar heard from Lawrence when he needed a recommendation to become a police officer after graduating from the Ventura County Sheriff's Academy. In August, he was hired by USC's public safety department.

John Thomas, the executive director and chief of the department, said that Lawrence was an "honorable, compassionate and professional" member of the community.

"We are a better department and the USC campus community is a safer place as a result of his service," Thomas said in a statement.

On Monday night, Quan's friends gathered outside Walnut High School. One clutched a heart-shaped balloon, another carried a collage of her basketball playing days. Still another held a basketball.

Lawrence's friends and family put up a Facebook page. "RIP Keith Lawrence, you will be missed," it said simply. Within hours, 840 had left comments or indicated they "liked" it. Concordia put up a link to Lawrence's game-winning shot that carried the school into a post-season tournament.

Michelle Thibeault, 27, said in a Facebook message that she had known Quan for more than a decade. The two were on the same athletic teams and went to junior high and high school together. "Monica was loved by everyone," she said.

During a somber gathering at the Cal State Fullerton gymnasium Monday, Foster read a brief statement from Quan's brother Ryan.

"We just shared a moment of incredible joy on her recent engagement," he wrote, and then added: "A bright light was just put out."

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

kate.mather@latimes.com

lauren.williams@latimes.com

Times staff writer John Canalis contributed to this report.

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Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell

An excerpt from Exploding the Phone

by Phil Lapsley

“

Locke spent the next twenty-four hours in what felt like a scene from a 1940s detective movie: a barren room with nothing more than a wooden table, a chair for him, two chairs for his interrogators, and a bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. Sitting across from him, the FBI agent and the telephone security man worked hard to get him to confess to using the blue box.

Before smartphones and iPads, before the internet or the personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world’s largest machine: the telephone system. The following is an excerpt from the new book Exploding the Phone written by Philip D. Lapsley and published by Grove/Atlantic, which tells the story of the “phone phreaks.”

There it was again.

Jake Locke set down his cup and looked more closely at the classified ad. It was early afternoon on a clear spring day in Cambridge in 1967. Locke, an undergrad at Harvard University, had just gotten out of bed. A transplant from southern California, he didn’t quite fit in with Harvard’s button-down culture — another student had told him he looked like a “nerdy California surfer,” what with his black-framed eyeglasses, blond hair, blue eyes, and tall, slim build. Now in the midst of his sophomore slump, Locke found himself spending a lot of time sleeping late, cutting classes, and reading the newspaper to find interesting things to do. Pretty much anything seemed better than going to classes, in fact. (“John Locke” is a pseudonym).

It was a slow news day. The Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper, didn’t have much in the way of interesting articles, so Locke once again found himself reading the classified ads over breakfast. He had become something of a connoisseur of these little bits of poetry — people selling cars, looking for roommates, even the occasional kooky personal ad probably intended as a joke between lovers—all expressed in a dozen or so words.

But this ad was different. It had been running for a while and it had started to bug him.

WANTED HARVARD MIT Fine Arts no. 13 notebook. (121 pages) & 40 page reply K.K. & C.R. plus 2,800; battery; m.f. El presidente no esta aqui asora, que lastima. B. David Box 11595 St. Louis, MO 63105.

Locke had seen similar classified ads from students who had lost their notes for one class or another and were panicking as exams rolled around. They often were placed in the Crimson in the hopes that some kind soul had found their notes and would return them. Fine Arts 13 was the introductory art appreciation class at Harvard, so that fit.

But nothing else about the ad made any sense. Fine Arts 13 wasn’t offered at MIT. And what was all the gibberish afterward? 2,800? Battery? M.f., K.K., C.R.? What was with the Spanish? And why was somebody in St. Louis, Missouri, running an ad in Cambridge, Massachusetts, looking for a notebook for a class at Harvard? Locke had watched the ad run every day for the past few weeks. Whoever they were, and whatever it was, they clearly wanted this notebook. Why were they so persistent?

One way to find out.

Locke looked around for a piece of paper and a pen. He wrote: “Dear B. David: I have your notebook. Let’s talk. Sincerely, Jake.”

He dropped the letter in the mail on his way into Harvard Square to find something interesting to do.

An envelope with a St. Louis, Missouri, postmark showed up in Locke’s mailbox a week later. Locke opened the envelope and read the single sheet of paper. Or rather, he tried to read it. It wasn’t in English. It seemed to be written in some sort of alien hieroglyphics. It was brief, only a paragraph or so long. The characters looked familiar somehow but not enough that he could decipher them.

Locke showed the letter to everyone he saw that day but nobody could read it. Later that evening, as Locke sat at the kitchen table in his dorm room and stared at the letter, trying to puzzle it out, one of his roommates came home. Shocked that Locke might actually be doing something that looked like homework, his roommate asked what he was working on. Locke passed the letter across the table and told him about it.

His roommate took one look and said, “It looks like Russian.”

Locke said, “That’s what I thought. But the characters don’t seem right.”

“Yeah. They’re not. In fact …” His roommate’s voice trailed off for a moment. “In fact, they’re mirror writing.”

“What?”

“You know, mirror writing. The letters are written backwards. See?”

Locke looked. Sure enough: backwards.

Locke and his roommate went to the mirror and transcribed the reversed lettering. It was Cyrillic — Russian letters. Fortunately, Locke’s roommate was taking a Russian class. They sat back down at the table and translated the letter.

“Dear Jake,” the letter read. “Thank you very much for your reply. However, I seriously doubt that you have what I need. I would strongly advise you to keep to yourself and not interfere. This is serious business and you could get into trouble.” Signed, B. David.

Locke sat back. Someone had put a cryptic ad in the newspaper. He’d responded. They sent him a letter. In mirror writing. In Russian. In 1967. During the cold war.

Spy ring.

It just didn’t get much cooler than this, Locke figured. Intriguing. Terrifying, even. And far, far better than going to class.

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NBCU’s Bonnie Hammer to run Cable; Joe Uva to run Telemundo

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – NBC Universal‘s executive lineup underwent a shift of responsibilities on Monday, with Bonnie Hammer, NBCU‘s chairman of cable entertainment and cable studios, taking control of NBC Universal’s full cable portfolio, and executive Lauren Zalaznick being promoted to a new role, and former Univision president and CEO Joe Uva taking over NBCU’s Spanish-language network Telemundo.

Under her new expanded duties, Hammer (pictured) will oversee Bravo, Oxygen, Style, Sprout and TV One adding to her existing duties of overseeing USA Network, SyFy, E!, G4, Cloo, Chiller and other properties. The newly consolidated collection of networks will be renamed Cable Entertainment Group.

Zalaznick, who has been serving as chairman of NBC Universal Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated media, has been promoted to the new position of EVP NBCUniversal, where she’ll focus on “innovation, digital, monetization and emerging technology across the company,” NBC Universal CEO Steve Burke told employees in an internal email.

Uva, meanwhile, has been tapped for the newly created position of NBCU’s chairman of Hispanic Enterprises and Content, a position that will include running the company’s Spanish language networks Telemundo and mun2. Uva stepped down as president and CEO of Univsion in June 2011.

Hammer and Zalaznick will assume their new responsibilities immediately, while Uva will come aboard April 3.

Burke, who’s enacted similar restructurings for NBCU’s sports and news divisions, said that the restructuring will help streamline things while allowing for better exploitation of the company’s assets.

“Our business is more dynamic and challenging than at any point in its history,” Burke wrote in a memo to his staff. “Now, more than ever, we need to simplify our organization and take advantage of the breadth of our assets. At the same time, we need to focus more on innovation and emerging technologies. These organization changes are designed to do just that,” Burke wrote.

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The New Old Age Blog: In Blended Families, Responsibility Blurs

Every year, Fran McDowell waited for the summer week when she would sing in a choral festival in the North Carolina mountains, then spend a few days in a lakeside cabin with close women friends.

That getaway grew more complicated to arrange — but perhaps more necessary — after her husband, Herb Beadle, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They had a “gloriously happy” marriage — her first, his second — for 11 years, and she was more than willing to care for him in sickness as in health. But he could no longer manage alone in their Atlanta home.

For a few years, other family members pitched in to allow Ms. McDowell her cherished vacation. Eventually, though, she had to ask her husband’s daughter, a medical professional in another state, to take him into her home for a week.

She said no, then yes. Then, the day before Ms. McDowell was to drive him there, her stepdaughter again refused, leaving no time for alternate arrangements. If this had been her biological child, “I would have said, ‘Come on, don’t do this to me,’” Ms. McDowell said. Instead, reluctant to make waves, she canceled her trip.

“I think confrontation is riskier for stepparents,” she told me. “I was the compliant one who would bite my tongue rather than say what I thought.”

Ms. McDowell never told her stepdaughter, or anyone in the family, how angry and disappointed she was, or how difficult it was becoming to care for their father, who died three years ago at 86. She told the members of her dementia caregivers support group instead.

It was that group’s leader, Moira Keller, who e-mailed me to suggest this topic. A clinical social worker with the Sixty Plus program at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, she wrote that “one of the biggest challenges I have is blended families in later life.”

Though I’ve written about the way the 1970s’ spike in divorces could complicate caregiving for adult children — more households to sustain, more siblings to either help or hinder — I hadn’t considered the impact on the older people themselves.

But Ms. Keller seems to be onto something. “The generation most likely to have stepchildren” — the boomers — “don’t need much care yet,” said Merril Silverstein, a Syracuse University sociologist co-editing a coming issue of the Journal of Marriage and the Family on stepfamilies in later life. “The crunch will come in 10 or 20 years.”

Initially, many adult children whose divorced or widowed parents remarry seem delighted, Ms. Keller said when we spoke. “They’re thrilled that Mom or Dad isn’t alone,” she said. “It’s a wonderful thing — until somebody gets sick.”

Then, she has found, “it gets really blurry. Who’s going to do what?” Grown children don’t have much history with these new spouses; they often feel less responsibility to intervene or help out, and stepparents may be unwilling to ask. Perhaps it’s unclear whether children or new spouses have decision-making authority.

“Older couples in this situation fall through the cracks,” Ms. Keller said.

Research shows that the ties which lead adult children to become caregivers — depending on how much contact they have with parents, how nearby they live, how obligated they feel — are weaker in stepchildren, Dr. Silverstein said. Money sometimes enters the equation too, Ms. Keller added, if biological children resent a parent’s spending their presumed inheritance on care for an ailing stepparent.

Adela Betsill, another of Ms. Keller’s support group members, married her longtime partner five years ago — her second marriage, his third. She has since given up her interior design business to care for Robert who, at 72, has also developed Alzheimer’s disease. His two children have had little involvement — perhaps because she’s just 49 and presumed able to handle everything.

Thus, though Robert’s son works from an office in their home, if Ms. Betsill needed to go out and asked him to remind his father to eat lunch, “he might, or he might not,” she said. “I don’t think he realizes it’s a burden.” So she has not asked.

Would it be different if she were his biological mother and he saw her wearing out under the strain? She thinks so, but it’s hard to know. After all, biological families also experience plenty of conflict and avoidance as elders age.

Still, that sense of reciprocity we often hear from caregivers — she took care of me when I was young, so I need to help out now that she’s old — doesn’t apply in late-life stepfamilies. Ms. Betsill didn’t raise this man, or his half sister.

Older couples who marry or remarry often discuss their finances, Ms. Keller has found. (An elder attorney, Craig Reaves, discussed the legal consequences here.) But illness and dependence may prove even more difficult subjects to broach.

“If I could yell one thing from a mountaintop,” Ms. Keller said, “it’s to talk about this stuff, too. Who’s going to take care of you if you become sick? Talk about that while you’re still healthy.”

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: Liberty Global in Talks to Buy Virgin Media

6:59 a.m. | Updated

LONDON – Liberty Global, the international cable company owned by the American billionaire John C. Malone, is in discussions to buy the British cable company Virgin Media.

In a brief statement on Tuesday, Virgin Media said it was in talks with Liberty Global, which serves almost 20 million customers worldwide.

“Any such transaction would be subject to regulatory and other conditions,” Virgin Media said in a statement. Spokesmen for both Virgin Media and Liberty Global declined to comment further.

Shares in Virgin Media, which was formed through several mergers of small British cable companies and a cellphone company in the 2000s, rose almost 16 percent in afternoon trading in London on Tuesday.

Its shares have jumped almost 60 percent in the last 12 months, as more consumers sign up for so-called bundled services, including Internet and cellphone contracts.

The company, whose primary listing is on Nasdaq, is the second-largest pay-TV provider in Britain after BSkyB, which is partly owned by Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corporation.

Virgin Media’s market capitalization stands at $10.4 billion. Including debt, Virgin Media’s enterprise value is around $19.4 billion, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

To secure a deal, analysts at Espirito Santo said Liberty Global may have to pay as much as $24 billion, though they questioned whether the international cable company could afford to fund the acquisition because of its existing high levels of debt.

Analysts also said that it would be difficult for Liberty Global to make costs savings between its current European operations and those of Virgin Media, adding that Liberty had waited to make its move for Virgin Media until the British cable operator had carried out a series of upgrades to its network and restructured its debt.

“Unless another bidder comes out of the woodwork, it’s hard to see much more of a premium on the price,” said Patrick Yau, a media analyst at Peel Hunt in London.

The British billionaire Richard Branson, whose Virgin brand is now used for a variety of products and services, including airlines and banks, owns less than 3 percent of Virgin Media.

While the British cable operator has been picking up market share, the company currently has 4.9 million customers, or roughly half the number of subscribers as its larger rival, BSkyB, according to filings from the companies.

A potential deal for Virgin Media would put Mr. Malone head-to-head with Mr. Murdoch, his longtime rival.

In 2008, the Liberty Group, which has operations in 13 countries, completed its purchase of a controlling stake in DirecTV, the satellite television provider, from News Corporation in a cash-and-equity deal worth roughly $11 billion.

The deal came after Mr. Malone’s purchase of a 16 percent stake in News Corporation, which he then traded for the satellite television operator, a number of regional sports networks and around $550 million cash.

Liberty Global has been expanding its presence in Europe and has operations from Ireland to Romania, though it failed last month in its bid to acquire the Belgian telecommunications company Telenet Group for $2.7 billion. Liberty Global currently owns a 58 percent stake in Telenet.

In August, Liberty Media, the media conglomerate also controlled by Mr. Malone, agreed to buy a stake in Barnes & Noble for $204 million, but declined to buy the bookseller outright.

The move disappointed some investors after Liberty had earlier offered to buy a 70 percent stake of Barnes & Noble for $17 a share if its chairman, Leonard S. Riggio, who owns around 30 percent of the company, agreed to the deal.

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Suspected child molester left L.A. archdiocese for L.A. schools

A former priest and suspected child molester left employment with the Los Angeles archdiocese to work for the L.A. Unified School District, officials confirmed Sunday.

The former clergyman, Joseph Pina, did not work with children in his school district job, L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy said. He added that, as a result of the disclosures, Pina would no longer be employed by the nation's second-largest school system.

Over the weekend, Deasy was unable to pull together Pina's full employment history, but said the district already was looking into the matter of Pina's hiring.

"I find it troubling," he said of the disclosures about Pina. "And I also want to understand what knowledge that we had of any background problems when hiring him, and I don't yet know that."

L.A. Unified itself has come under fire in the last year for its handling of employees accused of sexual misconduct.

Pina, 66, was laid off from his full-time district job last year, but returned to work episodically to organize events. One event he may have helped organize was a ribbon-cutting Saturday for a new education facility. School district officials over the weekend, however, could not confirm that. Pina did not attend the event, and the district could not confirm payment for any help he may have provided.

Pina's name emerged in documents released by the archdiocese to comply with a court order. His case was one of many in which church officials failed to take action to protect child victims and in which first consideration was given to helping the offending priests rather than their victims, according to the documentation.

A just-released, internal 1993 psychological evaluation states that Pina "remains a serious risk for acting out." The evaluation recounts how Pina was attracted to a victim, an eighth-grade girl, when he saw her in a costume.

"She dressed as Snow White ... I had a crush on Snow White, so I started to open myself up to her," he told the psychologist. "I felt like I fell in love with her. I got sexually involved with her, but never intercourse. She was about 17 when we got involved sexually, and it continued until she was about 19."

In a report sent to a top Mahony aide, the psychologist expressed concern the abuse was never reported to authorities.

Pina's evaluation also includes a recommendation "to take appropriate measures and precautions to insure that he is not in a setting where he can victimize others." Pina continued to work as a pastor as late as March 1998.

School district officials could not verify Pina's hiring date over the weekend, but he took a job with L.A. Unified as the school system was carrying out the nation's largest school construction program. His job involved community outreach, building support for school projects, while also finding out communities' concerns and trying to address them, officials said. Such work was crucial to the program, because even though communities wanted new schools, their locations and other elements could prove controversial. Such projects frequently involved tearing down homes or businesses, environmental cleanups, and the blocking of streets and other disruptions.

"His duties were to rally community support and elicit community comments regarding schools in a neighborhood," district spokesman Tom Waldman said.

Pina's work did bring him into contact with families, frequently at public meetings organized to hear and address their concerns.

Projects that Pina worked on included a new elementary school in Porter Ranch and a high school serving the west San Fernando Valley, Waldman said. The high school, in particular, generated substantial public debate as a district team and a local charter school competed aggressively for control of the site.

The $19.5-billion building program is winding down, and, as a result, many jobs attached to it have come to an end. Pina's was among them.

The dedication he may have helped organize Saturday was for the Richard N. Slawson Southeast Occupational Center in Bell. Participants told KCET-TV, which first reported Pina's school employment, that he had assisted with community outreach on that project. The adult education and career technical education facility has 29 classrooms as well as health-career labs and child care for students. The school opened in August 2012.

Pina "was slated for some additional temporary work when the issue came to our attention last week and that work was canceled," Deasy said.

It may have been Pina who first alerted district officials that his name appeared in disclosed documents, Deasy said. Pina called a senior administrator in the facilities division. So far, no untoward issues have emerged regarding Pina's work for L.A. Unified.

howard.blume@latimes.com

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Amputee Soccer Players Face Their Prosthetists — On the Field

LONDON — The beautiful game was exactly that as amputee footballers took to a pitch in the heart of the city to challenge the men who made their prosthetics.

Players on both sides of the field share a deep passion for the game Americans call soccer, and a deep respect for what their opponents have done. Three of the men on the field lost limbs to the game they love, and feel a debt of gratitude to the prosthetists who helped them keep playing. James Catchpole, who organizes an amputee team based in north London and in this game played for the amputees’ “all-star” team the LA Spurs, sees the game against the Roehampton Prosthetists as a win-win.

“In a way, it reflects badly on them if we lose,” he said. “It will mean they haven’t supplied us with good enough legs.”

Amputee football is growing in the United Kingdom, with teams popping up from East Anglia to Sheffield to Cardiff. Dean Heffer, sports officer for the Limbless Association, wants to get the British game in line with the internationally recognized version of amputee football, then establish a British team. The goal is to see amputee football recognized as a Paralympic sport.

The mutual respect these men have for each other comes through in the pre-match banter as Heffer teased Andrew Rees, a prosthetist at Queen Mary Hospital in London.

“Make sure you put the foot on the right way,” Heffer joked as Rees helps him into his gear.

“No promises,” Rees replied with a grin.

Teasing aside, the skill shown in a game featured in the documentary series Ford’s Fantastic World of Football is impressive indeed. Some of the players wear their prosthetics and others move about on crutches, but all show remarkable grace and fluidity of movement. These guys want people to know that amputee athletes are extraordinarily skilled, and no less driven than their able-bodied compatriots.

“What we’re doing is quite abnormal, which is showing people that you can play football with one leg and actually be as good if not better than able-bodied opposition,” Catchpole said.

Michael Ishiguzo proved the point. He was a professional footballer in Nigeria and lost his leg due to an improperly treated fracture suffered during a game. Yet he’s lost none of the passion, or skill, that made him a top-tier player in his homeland. He has no trouble confusing opponents with beautifully executed feints and defense-splitting passes.

“The quality of football in this team is top notch,” Ishiguzo said. “The speed, balance, passing and agility are phenomenal.”

The two teams played three half-hour games at a staggering pace, with the Spurs winning two of three matches.

“This is a much tougher game than last year,” Rees said. “They’ve improved ten-fold. They were pressing us hard up the pitch and just quicker to every second ball. I’m just glad we managed to win one.”

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Bolshoi ballet chief heads to Germany after attack

MOSCOW (AP) — The artistic director of the Bolshoi ballet said he knows who ordered an acid attack that left him with severe burns to his eyes and face but won’t say, voicing hope that investigators will soon name the perpetrator.

Sergei Filin checked out of a Moscow hospital Monday and headed to Germany for further rehabilitation.

Filin, 42, wore shades and a bandage on his head, and skin on his face was red and swollen from burns. But he spoke energetically and seemed to be in a good mood as he walked out of the hospital accompanied by his wife.

“My body is full of strength and energy,” he told reporters.

Filin earlier told Russian state television that he knew who ordered the attack but wouldn’t give names. “My heart tells me who did it,” Filin told Rossiya 24 television in an interview broadcast late Sunday.

He said that investigators would visit him in Germany as part of the continuing probe.

An attacker threw sulphuric acid in Filin’s face in Moscow on Jan. 17, as he was returning home from work.

“I felt enormous, unbearable pain,” Filin recalled in the television interview. “I fell face down in the snow and started rubbing my face and eyes with snow.”

His colleagues said the attack on Filin could be in retaliation for his selection of certain dancers over others for the prized roles.

The Bolshoi has been plagued by intrigue and infighting that have led to the departure of several artistic directors over the past few years.

Filin told reporters Monday as he was leaving the hospital that he’s still seeing as if through a mist as his eye treatment is continuing, and added that he will have to undergo further eye surgery in Germany.

“I don’t care about my face, my hair, my looks,” he said in the television interview. “I’m ready to be completely bald, look like a Frankenstein. It will have no impact on my heart, on my soul. All my inner self, all my energy is focused on recovering eyesight.”

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The New Old Age Blog: Therapy Plateau No Longer Ends Coverage

Ellen Gorman, 72, a New York psychotherapist, can’t walk very far and gets around the city mainly by taxi, “which is really expensive,” she said. Twice since 2008 her physical therapy was discontinued because she wasn’t progressing. But after a knee replacement last year, she is getting physical therapy again, exercising with her therapist and building up her endurance by walking in the hallway of her Manhattan apartment building.

“Before this, I was getting weaker and weaker, and I just kept caving in,” she said.

Because of an action by Congress and a recent court settlement, Medicare probably won’t cut off Ms. Gorman’s physical therapy again should her progress level off — as long as her doctor says it is medically necessary.

Congress continued for another year a little-known process that allows exceptions to what Medicare pays for physical, occupational and speech therapy. The Medicare limits before the exceptions are $1,900 for physical and speech therapy this year, and $1,900 for occupational therapy.

In addition, the settlement of a class-action lawsuit last month now means that Medicare is prohibited from denying patients coverage for skilled nursing care, home health services or outpatient therapy because they had reached a “plateau,” and their conditions were not improving. That will allow people with Medicare who have chronic health problems and disabilities to get the therapy and other skilled care that they need for as long as they need it, if they meet other coverage criteria.

The settlement is expected to affect thousands, and possibly millions, of Medicare beneficiaries with chronic health problems like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries. It could also help families, as well as the overburdened Medicare budget, delay costly nursing home care by enabling seniors to live longer in their own homes.

“Under this settlement, Medicare policy will be clarified to ensure that claims from providers are reimbursed consistently and appropriately and not denied solely based on a rule-of-thumb determination that a beneficiary’s condition is not improving,” said Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the Medicare program.

The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Medicare Advocacy and Vermont Legal Aid on behalf of four Medicare patients and five national organizations, including the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Parkinson’s Action Network and the Alzheimer’s Association. A tentative settlement had been reached in October and on Jan. 24 a federal judge in Vermont approved the deal.

For seniors getting skilled services at home under a doctor’s order, the settlement means Medicare’s home health coverage has no time limit, Margaret Murphy told lawyers attending the annual meeting of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys in Washington, D. C., shortly after the then-tentative settlement was announced.

The coverage “can go on for years and years, if your doctor orders it,” said Ms. Murphy, the center’s associate director, who added that patients must be homebound (though not bedbound) and need intermittent care — every couple of days or weeks – that can only be provided by a physical therapist, nurse or other trained health care professional. When physical therapy is provided as part of Medicare’s home health benefit, the therapy dollar limits may not apply.

The settlement ensures that nursing home residents will also get coverage for skilled care regardless of improvement, but does not change the duration, which is still limited to up to 100 days per “benefit period.” That begins when a patient is admitted as an inpatient to a hospital or a nursing home for skilled care and ends after 60 days without skilled care. The agreement preserves the requirement that they must also have spent at least three days as inpatients in a hospital.

Federal officials say the settlement is not a change in Medicare coverage rules, but that statement may surprise many beneficiaries and providers.

“If someone isn’t making progress, I say, ‘Listen, I’m sorry but Medicare’s not going to cover this so you can come in for a few more sessions but then I have to let you go,’ ” said Greg Babiec, a physical therapist and one of the owners of Evolve, a private therapy practice with offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn. He had not heard about the settlement.

Beneficiaries also often lose Medicare coverage for outpatient therapy because they hit the payment limit. But under the exceptions process Congress continued for another year, the health care provider can put an additional code on the claim that indicates further treatment above the $1,900 limit is medically necessary. When treatment costs reach $3,700, the provider can submit medical documentation to support a request for another exception to cover 20 more sessions. (A Medicare fact sheet provides some additional details, but has not been updated for 2013.)

In 2011, nearly five million seniors received therapy services at a cost of $5.7 billion, and about one out of every four received an exception to the then-$1,870 limit, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent government agency that advises Congress.

Just a few hours before the settlement was approved, Rachel DeGolia learned that her 87-year-old father in Chicago was going to have to stop therapy because he stopped showing improvement — again.

“Every time he stops going to physical therapy, he starts to backslide in terms of his balance, his strength and his mobility,” said Ms. DeGolia, executive director of the Universal Health Care Action Network, a national advocacy group in Cleveland. His physical therapist did not know Medicare will cover therapy to prevent her father’s condition from getting worse.

Under the settlement, Medicare officials have until next January to straighten things out by notifying health care providers. Beneficiaries are not among those to be contacted, and so far the federal officials have not issued a formal statement on the settlement.

But patients don’t have to wait for their provider to get the official word, said Judith Stein, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs and executive director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy. “This isn’t a clandestine settlement,” she said.

The center’s Web site offers free “self-help” packets explaining how to challenge a denial of coverage that is based on the lack of improvement. Ms. Stein also advises beneficiaries to show a copy of the settlement — also available from the Web site — to your health care provider at your next physical therapy appointment if you are concerned about losing Medicare coverage. (If you follow this advice, let us know what happens.)

The Web site also explains how beneficiaries can request a review of their case if they received skilled nursing or therapy services in a skilled nursing facility, at home or as outpatients and were denied Medicare coverage because of a lack of progress after Jan. 18, 2011, when the lawsuit was filed.

Dean Lerner relied on the settlement last month to ensure that his brother-in-law would continue to receive Medicare physical therapy coverage.

“My brother-in-law in St. Louis suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and has for many years, and my sister is having a devil of a time helping him as his disease progresses,” said Mr. Lerner, a retired lawyer and state health official in Des Moines, who is also a Medicaid consultant.

A physical therapist teaches his brother-in-law to stand, turn and use a walker and maintain what little strength he still has. But because his condition hasn’t improved, the therapist said Medicare would not pay for additional sessions.

“But for my being an attorney, the outcome may well have been very different, and that shouldn’t be,” he said. “Why should you have to fight?”

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