No one can blame Coalinga residents for looking at some of the proposals and plans with a jaundiced eye. Last year, Marcus Asay and his crew arrived in Coalinga to sell the idea of a cargo port. He offered an extravagant proposal to create a multi-million dollar industry.
Article from Coalinga Press, August 22, 2018.
Asay returned to Coalinga two more times, during city council meetings to report progress, and encourage residents and city council members to continue to back his idea.
It was all innocent enough. After all, Asay asked for no investments, or even commitment promises. He only asked that the city would back his dreams.
Asay even arrived with a cake to celebrate the idea and the progress made on its fruition.
But then Coalinga heard little to nothing from him and his team.
in November 2017, Asay’s company was accused of fraud and wrong doing. was accused of fraud and wrong doing. The California insurance Commission filed legal papers in court accusing the company of selling fraudulent insurance policies.
The companies, American Labor Alliance Workers · Compensation Fund & Trust and CompOne USA, were found to be functioning without license to sell insurance. The commission sought to impose a $3,000,000 fine against the company. The two men leading the companies, Marcus Asay and Antonio Gastelum.
“FBI agents on behalf of the U.S. Department of Labor served warrants for workplace injury benefit program records in July 2017 at the headquarters office of American Labor Alliance.
“Prosecutors have now filed a Grand Jury indictment against American Labor Alliance, Marcus Asay the Co-Founder, chairman, and controlling individual behind ALA. And Antonio Gastelum who served a variety of supervisory roles regarding ALA, including at various times serving as ALA’s chief operations officer, overseeing legal compliance matters for ALA, and controlling a number of ALA’s financial affairs, working directly under defendant Asay.
“In addition to selling workers’ compensation insurance, the Indictment claims that from at least 2011 onward, defendant ALA offered what it purported to be a retirement pension plan to its clients, known by a variety of names including the “ALA Trust,” the “ALA Retirement Plan Trust,” or the “ALA Retirement Plan & Trust.” (ALA Trust).
“The defendants caused ALA to issue Certificates of Liability to the clients that purported to provide “Workers Compensation and Employers’ Liability” coverage. The defendants further caused the Certificates to list one or more of the National Insurance Companies as “insurers.” The Certificates were signed by defendant Asay.
“Prosecutors allege that “Defendants caused the Certificates to contain materially false and fraudulent statements. The National Insurance Companies did not provide Workers’ Compensation insurance to ALA’s clients as the defendants purported in the Certificates. In some cases, the National Insurance Companies had issued liability policies or bonds to ALA itself, but would not have paid Worker’s Compensation benefits to any ALA client whose employee was injured or died.”
“In many of these cases, ALA-issued Certificates of Liability that contained a false policy number, not the real policy or bond number that pertained to ALA’s corporate coverage.”
Source: WorkCompAcademy.com
In light of what we now know about Asay’s activities, any cargo port coming to Coalinga, if it did, would probably be independent of his efforts.