Marketer Said to Be Fishing for Deal Long Before Feds Started Busting Kickback Rings

More than four years before federal prosecutors took down a Southern California hospital executive who was paying off a corrupt state senator, an ex-convict set up a meeting with an insurance company investigator to discuss trading inside information for immunity. They were supposed to meet at a Starbucks in Newport Beach around 7 p.m., recalled Bill Reynolds, a former investigator for Zenith Insurance Co. and Berkshire Hathaway, during a December 2010 deposition. But his source, Paul Randall, kept changing the location until 8:30 p.m., when he settled on a Mexican restaurant on Highway 1...