Cindy Ossias

Cindy Ossias is an American lawyer and musician. In the early months of the year 2000, while serving as a long-time senior lawyer for the California Department of Insurance (CDI), Ossias leaked confidential documents exposing the allegedly illegal and corrupt activities of Chuck Quackenbush, then Insurance Commissioner of California and head of CDI, to the state legislative consultant investigating the Commissioner's actions. In 2004, Ossias also took a seat as Director for California government watchdog group Californians Aware.

In 1983, Ossias graduated from Golden Gate University School of Law. She practiced criminal defense and family law in San Francisco as a sole practitioner before entering public service as a staff attorney in 1986 at the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board.

Ossias joined the CDI in January 1990. In 1991, she was appointed by then-Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi to a special task force that wrote the state's regulations governing unfair claims practices by insurance companies. During her tenure at the agency, Ossias served as project manager and lead counsel for CDI's activities following various natural catastrophes, including the Oakland firestorm of 1991, the Southern California wildfires of 1993, and the Northridge earthquake of 1994. She also acted as lead counsel and project manager in disciplinary cases against large insurance companies such as Allstate Insurance, State Farm Insurance, Mercury Insurance Group, UnumProvident Insurance Group (now Unum), and HealthMarkets, Inc. (an insurance holding company).

Prior to her legal career, Ossias enjoyed a brief career as a singing waitress.

In early 2000, Ossias photocopied confidential CDI documents, supplied them to the California State Assembly Insurance oversight committee, and disclosed that fact to the California Highway Patrol. In testimony before the State Assembly committee (which provided her with complete immunity from criminal prosecution), Ossias detailed how CDI's upper management had suppressed findings of insurer wrongdoing after the Northridge earthquake of 1994 and instructed her to shred documents. The reports detailed claims-handling violations by State Farm, Allstate, and 20th Century Insurance, used by Quackenbush to reach settlements with those insurers requiring them to contribute millions of dollars to foundations created by the commissioner. In return, Quackenbush agreed not to fine the companies or to finalize the reports, allowing the firms to donate $12.8 million to private foundations he had created, in lieu of fines of up to $3 billion – the amount recommended by staff based on the egregious findings contained in the confidential documents Ossias felt compelled to disclose to the legislative oversight committee, in fact the very reports that upper CDI management had suppressed. In exposing the corruption within the California Department of Insurance, Ossias risked losing her long-held CDI position, her license to practice law, and her very liberty.

...
Wikipedia