An insurance startup recently opened an all-hours cafe and workspace on the edge SF's Financial District — where most businesses go dark by 5 pm.

Corgi Cafe, located on Claude Lane, between Union Square and the Financial District, hosts events and serves as a late-night workspace for tech industry types working unconventional hours, as the Bay Area News Group reports.

The menu offers the standard coffee, tea, matcha, and hot chocolate, as well as smoothies and protein shakes, which are reportedly the most popular item, and the staff includes baristas with prior experience at Starbucks, Peet’s, and Equinox’s Earth Bar.

Founders Emily Yuan and Nico Laqua say the café emerged from a combination of practical and situational factors, as the firm already leases the building for their core business, Corgi Insurance, and they had access to a vacant ground-floor space.

Per the News Group, they also pointed to the lack of late-night activity in the area, noting that most businesses close early and that there are few 24-hour cafes in San Francisco, making the storefront a valuable way to activate an underused space after hours.

The cafe has reportedly exceeded the owners' expectations in terms of foot traffic, particularly during peak hours after the workday and consistently busy into the late night.

Corgi Insurance positions itself as a direct competitor to major legacy insurers and financial firms. The company, which employs roughly 90 people, aims to overhaul what they describe as a slow and inefficient insurance industry built around paperwork and intermediaries.

The founders say they view the cafe as an extension of the company’s ecosystem, intended to support people working in tech — while serving really good drinks.

Image: Google Maps

• On the heels of the historic teachers’ strike, the San Francisco Unified School District is expected to issue preliminary layoff notices for 42 educators and other staff, a decrease from 298 last year. [Chronicle]
• A family-owned educational toy company in Illinois named Learning Resources was the lead plaintiff in the court case that took down Trump’s tariffs in the Supreme Court Friday, which he called “unpatriotic.” [CBC]
• A new proposed state Senate bill would require insurance companies to guarantee coverage for homes that meet wildfire safety standards, and if they don’t comply, they’ll be removed from the state’s home and auto market for five years. [Southern California News Group]
• A celebration of life for Betty Reid Soskin, the oldest National Park Service ranger who died in December at 104, is scheduled to take place March 1 at Oakland’s Kaiser Center for the Arts. [Oaklandside]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione could be immortalized in California law even if Trump sends him to the electric chair, as a ballot effort is underway to create an insurance measure called the “Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act.”

It’s no secret that accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione is something of a cult hero, and to many, even a heartthrob. NBC News reported this week that there were heart-shaped love letters to Mangione smuggled in with his socks in the clothes his attorneys provided him to wear for his court appearances.

In the latest bit of Magione-mania, a group of Los Angeles-based activists is hoping to start collecting signatures to place a ballot measure in a future statewide California election, inspired by Mangione. It’s a measure to reign in the health insurance industry, and would make it illegal for anyone other than a doctor to deny medication or medical procedures to a patient.

And as KRON4 reports, the name of this measure is the “Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act.”

To be fair, this is likely a publicity stunt. The initiative’s submission to the California Attorney General’s Office even misspells Luigi Mangione’s name as “Luigi Mangioni.” So they may not have dotted all their i’s and crossed all their t’s.

Either way, a measure to make it illegal for insurance companies to “delay, deny or modify any medical procedure or medication,” and leave that right only to a licensed physician, may prove popular enough. And even if it gets enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, the state Attorney General’s Office has final say on what ballot measures are called, so it seems unlikely the name “Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act” would survive that process.  

Moreover, the activists cannot even collect signatures on the measure yet. While a request has been submitted, like all citizen-crafted ballot proposals, it’s under a 30-day public comment period, which in this case will last until April 25. The Attorney General’s Office would then craft the actual language of the measure before supporters would even be able to begin collecting signatures to get it on the ballot.

There are also no statewide elections currently scheduled for 2025.

Obviously, anti-California conservatives are already in a huff over this, furious that anyone would celebrate an accused murderer. Though these same anti-California conservatives have celebrated Kyle Rittenhouse by asking him to testify before state legislatures (Rittenhouse killed two people at a Wisconsin protest), and celebrated Daniel Penny by giving him a job at Andreessen Horowitz (Penny killed a homeless man on the New York City subway).

Related: Healthcare CEO Shooting Suspect Was Reported Missing In San Francisco This Fall [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

For the past three decades, Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and a former adviser to the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve, has been channeling her harrowing escape from the 1991 Oakland Hills Firestorm into groundbreaking research on climate risk, as detailed in a recent NPR piece.

The fire, which killed 25 people and destroyed nearly 3,000 homes, spurred Wallace to investigate how extreme weather events like wildfires threaten housing, real estate, and insurance markets. Her work combines digitized mapping and financial data to assess these risks, uncovering vulnerabilities in fire insurance and mortgage systems.

Wallace’s research reveals alarming trends in California’s fire-prone housing markets. Insurance companies are canceling policies or raising premiums for high-risk areas, leaving millions of homeowners unprotected. Yet rebuilding continues in these zones, often with larger, more expensive homes. Wallace’s team discovered that wildfires act as a gentrifying force, increasing property values within five years of a fire.

To combat these issues, Wallace advocates for a shift from outdated, deterministic insurance pricing to probabilistic models that account for future climate risks. By modernizing how risks are priced and managed, Wallace aims to stabilize markets, protect homeowners, and confront the escalating impacts of climate change on housing and insurance.

Top image: Photo via Wikimedia

New federal indictments lay out a slew of insurance fraud charges against the co-owner of the Bayview’s notorious Specialty Towing, among them a charge that he loaded a tow truck full of four clunkers, faked an accident, and tried to collect full insurance.

It’s been one hell of a year for the Bayview District towing company Specialty Towing. In February, SF City Attorney Davd Chiu banned Specialty Towing getting city contracts for illegally towing cars and forcing the owners to pay cash under the table to get them back.  Mission Local also reported co-owner Jose Badillo bought a $300,000 Lamborghini while collecting welfare.

But the company probably got most of its notoriety for the April viral video seen below, where the company tried to tow a moving vehicle that had passengers in it.

The company’s biggest legal problem to date is surely how they were raided by the FBI earlier this month, with Badilla being arrested for allegedly faking a car accident with an already-undriveable car, and fraudulently collecting $34,000 in insurance money for it. That would have seemed to answer the question of why Specialty Towing was raided.

But lordy, a new set of federal indictments released Wednesday shows there is much more to this story. Badillo and three other alleged co-conspirators are accused of faking yet more car accidents to collect insurance money. The alleged schemes involved two other SF towing companies that Badillo owns: Jose’s Towing, and Auto Towing.

The most brazen (and hilarious!) of these alleged schemes was Badillo and co-defendants Kirill Afanasyev and Jason Naraja, from SF and Hayward respectively, loading a tow truck with four cars that were “inoperable or had pre-existing damage” according to the feds. Badillo then allegedly staged a completely fake accident with the loaded truck in San Mateo, and tried to collect the full value of all four of the vehicles in an insurance claim. The other co-defendants are accused of knowingly making false statements to support the scheme.

They only got $5,210 from the insurance company. But in the eyes of the law, insurance fraud is still insurance fraud, regardless of the degree to which it was successful.  

In another more successful scheme, Badillo, Afanasyev, and Jaime Respicio of Pleasant Hill allegedly staged another fake accident with an inoperable vehicle in 2019. That accident netted them $47,856 from the insurance company.

All four defendants have been arrested and released on bail of $50,000. Naraja was scheduled to appear in federal court this morning at 10:30 am. Badillo is scheduled to appear Friday morning, Respicio on September 5, and Afanasyev on September 9.

Related: FBI Raids Notorious Bayview Towing Company, the One That Tried to Tow a Moving Car [SFist]

Image: CherryRyu via Reddit

Investigators in the bizarre buried Mercedes-Benz case in Atherton have concluded the whole thing was a case of insurance fraud, and lo and behold, the car’s late owner Johnny Bocktune Lew collected a cool $87,000 after reporting the car stolen in 1992.

True crime fans have been been having a ball these last two weeks with the offbeat case of a buried Mercedes-Benz found deep underground in an Atherton yard, after it was discovered by a team of landscapers at the property on 351 Stockbridge Avenue in the wealthy San Mateo County community. The vehicle had been “stolen,” or should we say, it had been reported stolen in Palo Alto in 1992 by its owner Johnny Bocktune Lew, whom parenthetically neighbors described as a “crook,” and whose own daughter said her father was “sketchy.” (Lew had also been convicted in 1999 for insurance fraud for paying undercover agents to sink his own $1.2 million yacht.)  

The car was removed the next day, and also a veil was removed revealing that Lew had done time for second-degree murder in the 1960s, and attempted murder in the 1970s. Though in terms of murders and such, no human remains were found in the vehicle.

But there was definitely a crime committed in all this. KTVU reports that investigators have determined the whole thing was insurance fraud, as the car had never actually been stolen.

And it was kind of a tell, four days into this whole mystery, when San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told the Bay Area News Group that the now-deceased Lew had collected $87,000 in insurance money for the car that was, you know, buried on his own property. Initial reports had suggested some other owner of the vehicle who was deceased.

The Chronicle has the fun additional detail that the Mercedes “was filled with bags of unused concrete.”

Lew is long dead, and the family moved out of the house in 2014. According to Zillow, the place last sold for $15 million in March 2020. Will this whole crazy affair help or hurt the property's value? Well, its current Zillow “Zestimate” is now $18.3 million, and its value may be helped by the publicity, or the fact that you just never know what you might find there.

Related: Mystery Unfolding In Atherton As Mercedes Is Found Buried In Yard, Likely From 30 Years Ago [SFist]

Image: Zillow

With the Northern California wildfires now 100% contained as of Tuesday, the investigation into how it began and how much damage it's caused has begun in earnest. According to a report from the AP, insurance claims for damages caused by the fires now total over $3.3 billion, a threefold increase from the original estimate of $1 billion. California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones issued a statement on the claims, saying that they expect that total to rise in the coming weeks. He wrote: "As shocking as $3 billion in insured losses are, the number is sure to grow, as more claims are coming. The insured losses only tell part of the tragic story of the October fires. We must remember that 43 people lost their lives and behind every insurance claim is someone who has lost their home, their business, and their precious memories. It will take years for these communities to recover and rebuild."

NBC Bay Area broke down the damage wrought by the six fires, reporting that over 8,000 structures were destroyed over the course of the past few weeks. 70% of those structures (or 6,190) were residential buildings and homes, with the rest being outbuildings such as detached garages and the like. The Tubbs fire alone destroyed over 4,600 residences, and ended up consuming over 36,800 acres of land.

Cal Fire is also continuing its investigation into who or what is to blame for the fire, with their sights currently set on some downed PG&E power lines. The power company is also conducting its own internal investigation, and has already submitted numerous reports to the California Public Utilities Commission about the damages they've discovered as a part of that search. According to the Chron's breakdown of the reports, PG&E said they found that over 1,500 power poles were damaged or destroyed one week after the fires began. In at least two reports, they say that falling trees also took down a few power lines in Kenwood and near Grass Valley in Nevada County.

Elsewhere, the pets who were left with and rescued by workers at pet shelters are still awaiting the return of their families. CBS reports that a few volunteers have set up a Facebook page to share pictures and listings of rescued animals. Monica Argenti, the Community Engagement Manager for Sonoma County Animal Services, said, "We still have quite a few animals that we are trying to get back to their families." You might also notice that many of the animals listed on the rescue page are cats. CBS spoke with a veterinarian, Dr. Kate McKencie, who told them that dogs tend to run towards their owners/families in times of crisis, whereas cats tend to run away.

If you're still searching for your pet, definitely check the Sonoma & Napa Fires Missing and Found Pets Facebook group to see if your loved one is listed there. They also warn families to look very carefully, as these rescues could look a little different, given that they just survived a massive wildfire.

Related: Amid Wildfire Tragedy, Tales Of Animal Resilience And Rescue Abound

Drivers for Lyft and Uber must (theoretically, and yeah, legally) be insured at all times on the road. The ride-hailing process, however, is a unique one. There's driving around as a private citizen waiting for a passenger to request a ride, there's picking up a passenger who has requested a ride, and then there's shuttling that passenger to their destination.

Responsibility shifts during that process — which is all legal — with the ride-hailing company, the driver, or both in combination liable depending on the circumstances of an accident.

That's the way it's been, but now, or in two days' time, Lyft drivers can opt to switch to a (hopefully) simpler system designed by the company in conjunction with MetLife Auto & Home's, as writes Bay City News. Farmers and Metromile already have offerings in a similar category, but those don't cover drivers after they've accepted or picked up a passenger — that time is still covered by Lyft or Uber.

In the end, it would appear to be in Lyft's best interest to have comprehensive insurance from an outside agency for their contractors. Currently, the company offers a $100,000 contingent policy for when a driver has the Lyft app on but hasn’t accepted a ride request or a passenger. Correction: Per Lyft, who wrote in to SFist, "when Ab 2293 went into effect earlier this year, Lyft's insurance policy (or a personal policy, like MetLife's, specifically designed for ridesharing) became primary any time that the app is on."

The Lyft/MetLife policy launched in Colorado early this year, and now here in California, is likely a sign of more, similar policies to come. Those could pertain to multiple companies, or they could continue to be company-specific with an Uber-only policy. However, that might present added confusion, since so many contractors drive for both Lyft and Uber, alternating fares depending on requests and other factors.

“As demand for ridesharing services increases, making sure ridesharing drivers are able to obtain insurance to protect themselves, their passengers and pedestrians has been a top priority,” California's Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said in a statement picked up by the Insurance Journal announcing his approval of the policy. Some might be discouraged by the fact that insurance policies have lagged so far behind the day-to-day reality of ride-hailing, but this seems to be a turn in the right direction.

Related: Flywheel Taxi Sues For Cities To Regulate Uber And Lyft

An internal sales-training document from Geico suggests an answer to the question of whether policyholders can give paid rides through Uber and Lyft while maintaining their personal coverage: Nope.

"If a customer advises of ridesharing (UBER, Lyft, etc) as part of their usage please Group Reject the policy using "Vehicle Use- Unusual Exposure" reads the document, which was obtained by the Chronicle. "If a customer advises of ridesharing (UBER, Lyft, etc) as part of their usage please refer the policy number through Outlook to R* Fraud Unit.," it continues.

There's also information on how to handle a call with a customer inquiring about coverage for ridesharing: The canned response is "Geico offers a personal auto policy and does not offer coverage for any kind of livery including taxis or limousines and this would fall in that category." It also sounds like if any of your cars are used for ridesharing, then your whole policy could be in jeopardy. In this case, you'd have to prove you no longer drive for "UBER, LYFT etc" to maintain your policy.

Geico ranks as the nation’s second-largest auto insurer (by volume of premiums). Others, such as State Farm and Allstate have similar rules, and as we learned over the summer, all these insurance companies are bing pushed by the California legislature to craft "hybrid policies" that could adequately cover drivers both when they're carrying a rideshare customer, and when they're using their car for personal use. Such policies are going to be necessary nationwide in order to keep UberX and Lyft drivers from remaining in a legal limbo when they get into an accident.

Discussion of cancellations from personal perspectives are all over uberpeople.net, a network for driver information and water cooler conversations, with the following a representative example:

Fortunately, it's a supportive community, and UberRey came to the rescue:

It doesn't sounds like UberRey is a lawyer, but he's certainly a team player.

In light of this morning's fire that displaced 72 people, we're always reminded that we still need to get that renters insurance (along with putting together that emergency preparedness kit and folding our laundry).

We quickly did a search and found that AAA and Allstate seem to be the popular ones. We just did an online quote with AAA, and it's a cheap $155 per year.

People in this Apartment Therapy thread go back and forth about whether it's worth the extra price for the earthquake rider, which would double your premiums. It was also noted that in terms of theft coverage, it's a good idea to get a lower deductible. Taking pictures to document all of your valuables is also important.

What renters insurance do you have, Commenters, and what have your experiences with it been?

California Attorney General Jerry Brown (and perhaps your next Governor?) subpoenaed the financial records from several health insurance companies yesterday. Why? Because he's he's worried that seven of the state's largest health insurance companies are raising premiums, unfairly so.

"Not only are the rate increases devastating to Californians strapped by the economy, but in some cases, they are possibly illegal," Brown said in a statement released on Thursday.

He's also concerned that companies have also been "denying payment for legitimate insurance claims."

Aetna Health, Anthem Blue Cross, CIGNA, Health Net, Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente and PacifiCare.have 30 days to shred hand over the documents for review.

The Federal Reserve just agreed to hand over $37.8 billion to vile insurance giant American International Group. You know, to go along with the $85 billion loan bestowed to the troubled insurance screw-ups last month? According to CBS :

Under the new program, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will borrow up to $37.8 billion in investment-grade, fixed income securities from AIG in return for cash collateral. These securities were previously lent by AIG's insurance company subsidiaries to third parties.

What does this mean for you? It means no one will help you out with all the debt you accrued at Saks for Men, even though you totally needed those shoes, bottle of YSL's M7, and those inane Prada charms to adorn your new cell phone, even though you totally mean to pay it all back, but, well, just can't.

In related news, check out the awesome vacation AIG ilk recently had at the St. Regis resort in Monarch Beach, California. A few tidbits: $200,000 dollars for rooms, over $150,000 for meals, $23,000 in spa charges, and $7,000 for golfing. (In their defense, that new St. Regis in Dana Point is quite spectacular.)

(By Anonymous) [No, not them, but a well-respected writer who choose SFist in which to rant about their woeful experience at St. Luke's, using a veil of anonymity. -- SFist]

The billing department at St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco is a shady operation. Last month we received two bills for about 250 bucks each. Our primary doctor is based out of St. Luke's, so most medical needs are taken care of there. One of the bills was for services this year, and since $250 is my insurance's yearly deductible, we paid it, no questions asked. But the second bill, you see, was for services from 2007. When we called St. Luke's to ask about it, they said that Aetna had paid for the services in 2007, but then "took the money back."

WTF?

So. We called my insurance, and asked them about it and they had no idea what St. Luke's was talking about, and told us to check our records and see if we had indeed paid them last year around the time the services were done. Alas, we checked our records, and could find nothing indicating that we had paid St. Luke's at that time, so: we went ahead and forked over the money.