LOS ANGELES — Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles charged more than a dozen alleged medical fraudsters, including doctors, for making bogus claims to government and private health care programs, including $1.6 billion billed in a sham rehab case called the largest of its type ever, officials announced today.
Among eight arrests Thursday were cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Harold Tabaie, 78, and his business partner, chiropractor Hany Malek, 61, charged in an alleged $135 million Medicare fraud scheme allegedly operated out of two Los Angeles clinics they co-owned and operated.
Prosecutors believe Tabaie performed an invasive plaque-clearing procedure on patients who did not actually require the treatment and repeated the operation on patients he previously treated unsuccessfully. Malek, suspected of posing as a medical doctor, allegedly diagnosed patients and recommended the surgery.
To hide the unusually high volume of procedures performed by Tabaie, the defendants allegedly fraudulently billed for the procedure under the names of other medical providers who did not actually perform the surgeries, prosecutors said.
Also under indictment are father-and-son David Young and Nathan Young, both of Los Angeles, charged with a years-long scheme to traffic vulnerable patients from around the country to Southern California and elsewhere to receive sham substance abuse treatment billed to private insurance companies for over $1.6 billion, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
With dozens of Los Angeles-area purported substance abuse treatment companies under their control, the Youngs directed so-called body brokers to target the homeless and addicts attending 12-step programs, federal prosecutors allege, seeking out individuals whose insurance policies provided the most generous reimbursements.
Prospective patients were often lured to Southern California and elsewhere by offering them free flights, money, apartments, hotel stays, cars, gift cards, marijuana, cigarettes, illegal drugs and prescription medications freely dispensed by doctors employed by the Youngs, according to the indictment filed in Los Angeles federal court.
But once in California, some patients whose insurance policies were not up to par were placed in cramped, unsanitary, crowded and often derelict housing described as trap houses, prosecutors contend.
Meanwhile, substance abuse therapy provided by the Youngs allegedly consisted of Zoom sessions with more than 100 attendees, with participation not required, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In one of several newly filed hospice fraud cases, Dr. Richard Keech, 83, of Torrance was charged in connection with a scheme to defraud Medicare by causing over $10 million in false and fraudulent claims for unnecessary services.
Keech, a physician and the medical director for at least two hospice companies, Blue Cross Hospice and Atlantica Management, signed documents referring Medicare beneficiaries to the hospices to receive hospice care and signed certificates of terminal illness falsely certifying that those same beneficiaries were terminally ill with a life expectancy of six months or less, prosecutors allege.
Authorities contend Keech signed certificates for Medicare beneficiaries who had not elected hospice care and were not aware that they had been placed on hospice, knowing that Blue Cross and Atlantica would submit claims for reimbursement for hospice care to Medicare based on those false certifications.
“It is especially egregious when doctors and other healthcare professionals, who pledged to do no harm, resort to petty greed and criminality,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement. “The cases announced today represent billions of dollars in intended losses. Every dollar drained out of our private and public health insurance systems is one less dollar available to those who truly need it.”