dpTARZANA, LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Several healthcare professionals are among more than a dozen people who have been arrested and charged for what federal prosecutors say amounts to $2 billion worth of alleged healthcare fraud.
ABC7’s Kevin Ozebek was there as federal agents carried out one of those arrests in Tarzana Thursday morning. Loud flash bangs were heard going off and FBI agents were seen scaling a hillside reach a mansion around 6 a.m.
Moments later, 61-year-old Hany Malek was placed in handcuffs and taken into custody.
Federal prosecutors allege Malek is a chiropractor who posed as a medical doctor.
Investigators allege that even though he’s just a chiropractor, he would diagnose patients with a disease just so they would have a procedure to remove plague form their arteries. Prosecutors allege the deliberate misdiagnosis were part of a scheme to bill Medicare.
“They did the surgeries on them and they did it multiple times,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli. “So they would say ‘actually the first surgery wasn’t successful, we need to do again.” This was all just to bill Medicare, just to churn money – so they can buy mansions like this.”
The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced charges against 15 people, including six medical professionals, for alleged healthcare fraud schemes, including “including sham substance abuse treatment programs, unnecessary artery treatments, and bogus hospice services.”
Eight of those individuals were arrested Thursday, many of them in the Los Angeles area.
Federal prosecutors say that includes a father and son accused of trafficking homeless people from around the country to Southern California and elsewhere so private insurance companies could be billed for treating them. But investigators say they rarely got the treatment they needed.
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