.jpg)
Two Southern California doctors have been arrested for allegedly participating in a $250 million fraud scheme involving weight-reduction surgery.
The company offering the surgeries, 1-800-GET-THIN, seemed ubiquitous in Southern California a few years ago, with radio ads blanketing the airwaves and billboards cluttering the roadsides. The company offered Lap-Band weight-reduction surgery – but authorities say it also ran a multimillion-dollar scam that subjected patients to unnecessary medical procedures and bilked insurers.
The two doctors arrested for the scam last week were Julian Omidi, 49, and Mirali Zarrabi, 55. Omidi was one of the owners of 1-800-GET-THIN. His medical license was revoked in 2009.
Omidi and Zarrabi were arrested on a 37-count federal indictment that included charges from mail and wire fraud to identity theft, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. Prosecutors say that when prospective patients would come to Omidi’s companies, patients would be convinced to undergo sleep studies designed to find medical conditions, which were then used to convince insurance companies to pre-approve Lap-Band surgery.
In some cases, however, the results of those studies were falsified to support the need for the surgery. Insurance companies shelled out at least $38 million for unnecessary surgeries, according to the Daily News. And if the insurers failed to authorize the surgeries, GET THIN would still bill them about $15,000 apiece for the sleep studies. All told, the company received millions of dollars in reimbursements, according to the US Attorney’s Office.
Zarrabi participated in the scheme by allowing his electronic signature to be used by GET THIN to make it appear that he had reviewed the phony sleep studies, prosecutors said. Zarrabi allowed this despite allegedly knowing that the study results were being altered.
“Patients were harmed as a result of this fraud scheme when they were subjected to unnecessary medical procedures, and insurance providers were harmed when they paid out tens of millions of dollars after receiving fraudulent bills,” Acting US Attorney Sandra Brown said.
Omidi and Zarrabi face up to 20 years in prison for each of the 31 counts against them, according to the Daily News.
