Sovereign Health is a mental health and addiction provider with a footprint throughout Southern California, several states and India. Tonmoy Sharma is its chief executive.

Sharma started Sovereign the year after he lost his license in the UK. He was a psychiatrist in the UK, until his license was revoked for conduct deemed dishonest, unprofessional and misleading, according to documents from the General Medical Council of the UK, which licenses physicians there. There is no record that he holds a license as a physician in California.

One center with six beds grew to 17 centers with 743 beds. A giant map hanging on the conference room wall details another 851 beds in development across the nation, which would bring the total to 1,594 beds.

Last year, his company sued Health Net , one of the nation’s largest insurers, for failing to pay $55 million for medical services rendered by Sovereign-related companies. Sovereign Health’s claims were routinely denied, according to the Los Angeles Superior Court complaint. In 2015, only 36 percent of Sovereign Health’s claims were paid. In 2016 only 3 percent of its claims were paid.

In a counter-suit Health Net argued that Sharma and his companies are engaged in massive fraud that harms all consumers. Sovereign-related companies – and many other addiction-treatment providers – “have abused the Affordable Care Act in a manner that threatens the ongoing viability of health insurers,” Health Net’s suit said. “This scheme, which involves fraudulently obtaining insurance policies and the submission of thousands of false and fraudulent claims, also raises the costs of healthcare coverage to consumers, who ultimately will have to pay higher insurance premiums.”

Sovereign and its affiliates comprise one of the largest groups of fraudulent providers, Health Net charged. Within the span of a single year, Sovereign’s companies went from billing Health Net less than $50,000 a month to more than $13 million a month, Health Net’s counter-suit said. How can that happen? Many clinics – including Sovereign’s – “have been engaged in a sophisticated fraud involving paying kick-backs to ‘buy’ hundreds of patients from teams of brokers, or ‘cappers,’ who find the patients in 12-step programs, AA meetings, homeless shelters and jails, often from outside California, and then ‘sell’ them for cash to the highest-bidding clinic,” its suit said.

What Health Net describes echoes a recent investigation of the industry by the Southern California News Group. Though many legitimate centers remain, critics and long-time insiders say a darker version of the industry is emerging, built around an illicit world of patient recruiters, fraud-driven clinics and drug-testing mills. Southern California, where the implementation of Obamacare makes it easy for recent arrivals to sign on for insurance, is on the front line of the conflict.

This summer federal and state agents raided several locations of Sovereign Health as part of an ongoing probe. No arrests were made when officials executed search warrants at sites in Culver City, Palm Desert, San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano. The search warrants were filed under seal, and officials were barred from discussing the extent of the investigation.

Litigation and FBI probes are not the least of Sharma’s worries. The article in the Orange County Register also reports that “body brokers” from other providers are in his parking lots trying to steal away his patients – and their insurance coverage ‘ every day.