Beverly Hills anesthesiologist Randy Rosen MD has been accused of insurance fraud in several criminal and civil proceedings over the last several years. The accusations included involvement with the California workers’ compensation system and later schemes targeting sober living homes. He has now entered a guilty plea in Orange County Superior Court along with his co-defendant Liza Vismanos the owner of the Wellness Wave surgical center in Beverly Hills and the Lotus Labs medical laboratory in Los Alamitos.
The Orange County District Attorney filed criminal charges against him (Case 16CF1363) on May 20, 2016, alleging that he “entered into an agreement with Kareem Ahmed and his companies: Physicians’ Funding Solutions, LLC, Med-Rx and Healthcare Finance Management to distribute transdermal compound creams which were manufactured by Curt’s Compounding Pharmacy in Orange County to workers compensation patients treated by Dr. Rosen.” And that he received “kickbacks” under the guise of selling accounts receivables.
As part of the Workers’ Compensation scheme, Dr. Rosen was charged with twenty-four counts of Withholding Material Facts on Insurance Claims and seventeen counts of Creating Documents for Purposes of Submitting False or Fraudulent Insurance Claims. Vismanos was charged with twenty-four counts of Withholding Material Facts on Insurance Claims. The couple was also charged with the aggravated white collar crime enhancement for losses exceeding $100,000 and $500,000. Dr. Rosen is charged with a crime-bail-crime enhancement pursuant to Penal Code Section 12022.1(b) for committing additional crimes while released on bail on his previous and still active insurance fraud case in People v. Randy Scott Rosen (Case No. 16CF1363).
And in Orange County criminal case 20CF1682, he and his co-defendant Liza Vismanos were arrested June 30, 2020 by the Orange County District Attorney’s on a combined 144 counts including money laundering, submitting fraudulent insurance claims and withholding material facts on insurance claims.
According to court documents related to his bail motion, “In approximately June 2017, Rosen/Vismanos entered into a fraud scheme specifically targeting patients from addiction recovery rehabs to bill their private medical insurance carriers primarily for two types of procedures; a non-FDA approved Naltrexone implant and Cortisone injections,”
“Per Rosen’s records he performed these procedures in as little as one-minute increments with as many as 72 procedures per day. Additionally, Rosen collected blood and urine from his patients, which was processed at Lotus Labs at a cost of approximately $4,000 per day after the procedure with no known medical necessity.” Investigators alleged 18 insurance companies were billed from June 2017 to May 2019 $661,940,464 and the two received $51,060,523.
The two were also accused of using two “body-broker” groups that would “sell Rosen patients in exchange for a kickback of the insurance proceeds.” The “marketers” would – often pay the patients (oftentimes $500 to $2,000 per procedure) to incentivize them into returning to Rosen for multiple procedures,” the bail motion alleges.
Rosen, was also involved in a civil federal lawsuit ( 8:13-cv-00956-AG-CW) filed by the State Compensation Insurance Fund involving a workers’ compensation fraud scheme at the infamous Pacific Hospital of Long Beach. State Fund’s proposed Third Amended Complaint asserted claims directly against, Dr. Faustino Bernadett, Jeffrey Catanzarite, Dr. Gerald Alexander, Dr. Jack Akmakjian, Dr. Ian Armstrong, Michael Barri, Dr. Mitchell Cohen, Alan Ivar, Edward Komberg, Dr. Randy Rosen, Dr. Lokesh Tantuwaya, Dr. Jacob Tauber, Dr. Assad Moheimani, and Jason Bernard, as well as entities associated with these individuals.
If one were to write a treatise on methods to perpetrate medical fraud, the 221 page Complaint filed by SCIF would be a good guide. Topics include “Lack of Licenses, Corporate Practice of Medicine, and Payment of Illegal Referral Fees” on the part of the Administrative Defendants, Individual Defendants and Provider Defendants, “Overbilling and Pricing Manipulation” on the part of the Pharmacy Defendants and some Provider Defendants, “Billing State Fund for Treatments and Services That Were the Product of Illegal Kickbacks and Referral Fees, Fraudulent Scheme to Overbill Services By Unbundling/Upcoding, Including Unbundling and Overbilling, Fraudulent Scheme re: Nurse Billing; Autologous Transfusion Billing; Duplicate Radiology Billing, Double-Billing of Prescriptions”, and more.
According to the federal docket in the SCIF civil case, SCIF and Rosen reported a settlement of the case between them in July 2016. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
And the Orange County District attorney just announced this month that Rosen pleaded guilty to several counts of submitting fraudulent insurance claims with an aggravated white collar crime enhancement, while scores of other charges were dismissed. He faces 10 years behind bars, but will get credit for the two years he has already served as the cases progressed through the justice system.
Vismanos pleaded guilty on Friday to insurance fraud and had dozens of charges dismissed. She will face home confinement.
“This is the largest prison sentence for a provider in a California workers’ compensation insurance fraud,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer in a prepared statement. “Dr. Rosen used vulnerable sober living patients who were desperately trying to battle their demons as an ATM machine to make a buck. He didn’t care about his patients; he only cared about making as much money as possible.”
Rosen’s California medical license is shown as currently “Renewed & Current.” However, as a result of the 2020 charges filed against him, he stipulated to an administrative order prohibiting him from practicing medicine until he criminal case was “fully and completely concluded.”