The Riverside District Attorney announced that four men were arrested and charged with several felonies stemming from an alleged $8 million health care fraud scheme. The four who were charged with 33 counts were Brian Andrew La Porte, DOB: 7-7-75, of Poway, Dennis Davin Bonavilla, DOB: 1-17-79, of Murrieta, Jeffrey D. Ogletree, DOB: 7-21-74, of Meridian, Idaho, and Babar Iqbal M.D., DOB: 12-18-73, of Irvine
Dr. Babar Iqbal was the head of the Riverside Regional Surgery Center, and allegedly worked with two of the defendants to provide health care for fraudulently claimed “employees” they had sent his way. Iqbal told those people that Medi-Cal wouldn’t cover their treatment and had them sign papers for a free health insurance policy, a district attorney senior investigator said
The California Medical Board records claims that Babar Iqbal graduated Ross University School of Medicine in 2001, and that he is still currently licensed to practice in California with no record of disciplinary action.
Ross University School of Medicine (RUSM) is a private international medical school in Portsmouth, Dominica. It was founded in 1978.
In 1985 California state medical licensing officials began investigating RUSM, along with other medical schools located in the Caribbean. The officials released a report stating that RUSM at that time had nearly no admissions standards, and that the school was in the business of providing medical degrees to “everyone that wants one.”
La Porte, who along with Bonavilla formed the Kingmakers LLC in San Diego and Drexel Group LLC in Wildomar – firms that investigators said were shell companies with no actual employees. They also had connections to Free Choice Healthcare Foundation, an unregistered charity which claimed it was formed to help those in need pay health care premiums.
La Porte, who used the name La Porta in connection with the alleged shell companies set up for the scheme, was released from federal prison in 2013, where he was sent for his role in a $20 million mortgage fraud scheme charged in 2010, according to papers that seek a court review for the source of any bail money La Porte might offer.
Ogletree, in 2013 was a vice president for Hospital Sisters Health System The company operates 16 hospitals and healthcare systems in Illinois and Wisconsin and is based in Springfield Illinois.
Investigators said on Ogletree’s recommendation, Hospital Sisters Health System donated more than $5 million to Free Choice Healthcare Foundation in January 2015. The money was supposed to be used to provide health insurance to 333 poor people in the Midwest for one year.
Defendants received $5 million in fraudulent income through donations made under false pretenses, and another $3 million from illegal kickbacks of funds paid on fraudulent health insurance claims, according to Riverside County District Attorney Senior Investigator Maureen Filley in documents filed with the case in Riverside County Superior Court.
Iqbal’s Riverside Regional Surgery Center drew the attention of the district attorney’s office and the California Department of Insurance in December 2016 when 22 of 23 alleged employees for Kingmakers were treated at the Iqbal’s center within five weeks of getting health insurance policy, with initial claims totaling $4 million.
Investigators also moved in court to have assets frozen at several bank accounts linked to the defendants.