Allstate Insurance Company received a judgment this month of more than $7 million, following a Racketeering Influenced in Corrupt Organizations (RICO) investigation nearly 10 years in the making.
The RICO complaint was filed in 2008 in the Las Vegas Federal District Court against chiropractor Obteen Nassiri, D.C., and his businesses: Advanced Accident Chiropractic Care, ONN Management, Digital Imaging Services and Digital X-Ray. Since the suit was filed, the Chiropractic Physicians’ Board of Nevada revoked Obteen Nassiri’s license.
Allstate’s lawsuit alleged Nassiri began defrauding Allstate in 2003 by exaggerating clinical findings, submitting improbable diagnoses, charging for treatment he did not provide, providing unnecessary and excessive treatment, grossly misrepresenting billing, making inappropriate referrals, and exhibiting a general pattern of illegal and fraudulent conduct. The jury in the case also found Nassiri’s spouse, Jennifer Nassiri, liable for negligent misrepresentation in the overall fraudulent scheme to harm Allstate. The verdict sided with Allstate in June and the final judgment and award was made this month. The total judgment against the defendants included an award to Allstate for $3.59 million in compensatory damages, $2.51 million in punitive damages and $1 million in pre-judgment interest. The company is also pursuing more than a million dollars in attorney’s fees and costs.
Over the last decade, Allstate has filed a series of civil fraud related cases against alleged perpetrators in various states across the nation.
Allstate recently filed a $5.6 million lawsuit in August in New Jersey. It alleges that Shams M. Qureshi MD, age 63, made payments to individuals who acted as middlemen by brokering auto accident patients from New Jersey and New York clinics to Qureshi’s surgery center.
In early 2013 Allstate filed against three New York-area medical providers who allegedly engaged in a fraudulent medical billing scheme seeking $1.7 million Property Casualty 360 reports that since 2003, the insurer has filed a total of 46 fraud lawsuits in the state of New York State seeking more than $233 million in damages.
Last year A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge has ordered Daniel H. Dahan, D.C., and his business, Progressive Diagnostic Imaging, to pay Allstate Insurance Company $7 million in a qui tam (“Whistleblower”) lawsuit arising out of a scheme to defraud insurance companies. Dahan is president of Practice Perfect Management and Consulting Services, of Long Beach, California, which specializes in helping chiropractors set up clinics that combine chiropractic, medical, and physical therapy services. Allstate’s lawsuit alleged that Dahan purchased report-writing software that purported to analyze x-rays and form medical opinions and diagnoses, including opinions concerning permanent impairment ratings, and thereafter formed Progressive Diagnostic Imaging to solicit x-rays from chiropractors, with the assurance that “board certified radiologists” would analyze the films.
As far back as 2004 a Dallas jury found that Texas’ largest chiropractic chain, Accident and Injury Pain Center Inc., conspired in a statewide scheme designed to defraud Allstate. The jury ordered them to pay $2.8 million in actual damages and $3 million in punitive damages.