Federal law‑enforcement officials carried out coordinated predawn raids in several Southern California cities on Thursday, arresting 15 people accused of orchestrating one of the largest health‑care fraud operations in recent memory. The Justice Department says the scheme siphoned nearly $2 billion from Medicare, private insurers and California’s Medicaid program.
Key players and alleged schemes
Among those charged are Dr. Harold Tabaie, 78, a cardiothoracic surgeon from Anaheim, and his business partner Hany Malek, 61, a chiropractor based in Tarzana. Prosecutors allege the pair ran a $135 million scheme that billed Medicare for medically unnecessary atherectomies—arterial procedures that use a bladed catheter to clear plaque. Malek is accused of posing as a physician to diagnose patients with arterial disease that did not exist, while Dr. Tabaie performed the invasive procedures, sometimes repeatedly on the same patients, causing severe pain and discomfort.
Malek also faces charges for fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loan applications in 2021, allegedly inflating a 25 percent revenue loss to obtain funds that were later spent on personal expenses, family credit cards, other ventures and even rare coins.
Father‑son substance‑abuse scam
In a separate indictment, Nathan Young, 39, and his father David Young, 71, are accused of operating a $1.6 billion substance‑abuse fraud network. The duo allegedly recruited drug‑addicted individuals nationwide and funneled them to dozens of Los Angeles rehab centers. Body brokers—identified as Honey Phipps, 42, and Cody Phipps, 36, of Greenville, Texas—received kickbacks for steering patients to specific facilities. Once admitted, patients received little or no treatment; staff were reportedly instructed to sedate patients with medication to keep them from leaving, allowing the Youngs to continue billing insurers.
According to prosecutors, the Youngs also offered drugs to patients, cut off communication with families, and physically prevented patients from leaving the facilities, all to sustain the fraudulent billing cycle. When a patient requested to leave detox to smoke marijuana, Nathan Young allegedly ordered the patient be given what he wanted off‑site to keep him in the program.
Additional fraud allegations
The sweep also targeted other schemes, including a $140 million fraud involving false hospice certifications for non‑terminal patients, and a prescription‑fraud operation in which Christina Mareik, 61, of Whittier, submitted thousands of bogus prescriptions for high‑reimbursement generic drugs to Medi‑Cal, California’s Medicaid program.
Doctors Hassan Badday, 48, of Los Angeles, and Robby Ayoub, 52, of Huntington Beach, were charged with accepting illegal kickbacks from a Houston laboratory marketer in exchange for ordering unnecessary Medicare genetic tests.
Justice Department response
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division called the case “the largest sober‑home fraud scheme the Department has ever prosecuted” and highlighted the role of data analytics in uncovering the invasive‑procedure fraud. “Our message is simple: if you steal health‑care dollars from the American taxpayer or abuse your position to harm patients, we are coming for you — and the data will lead us to you,” McDonald said.
First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli added, “It is especially egregious when doctors and other health‑care professionals, who pledged to do no harm, resort to petty greed and criminality. Every dollar drained from our private and public health‑insurance systems is one less dollar available to those who truly need it.”
The indictments demonstrate a continued federal commitment to protecting patients and preserving the integrity of the nation’s health‑care system, reinforcing the Trump administration’s focus on law‑and‑order and safeguarding American families from predatory schemes.
Original reporting: Fox News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
