LOS ANGELES (AP) – A former Southern California doctor was convicted Thursday for mistakenly billed military and personal insurers $ 355 million for weight loss surgery.
Julian Omidi, 53, of West Hollywood and his Beverly Hills-based company, Surgery Center Management LLC, have been convicted by a federal jury of three dozen cases of phone and postal fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and health-related false statements, one said Notice from the US Attorney General.
A second doctor, Dr. Mirali Zarrabi, 59, of Beverly Hills, has been acquitted of all charges, prosecutors said.
Omidi and his relatives controlled the now-defunct 1-800-GET-THIN business, which promoted and performed lap-band surgeries, prosecutors said.
Between 2010 and 2016, Omidi convinced insurers to pre-approve the operations by subjecting potential patients to sleep studies to determine if they were suffering from sleep apnea, a “comorbidity” that could warrant the procedure, prosecutors alleged.
Omidi sometimes tricked its staff into falsifying study results and other information, including patient weights, prosecutors said.
Private insurance companies and Tricare, a military health program, were billed an estimated $ 355 million and paid approximately $ 70 million for the lap-band procedures and sleep studies, prosecutors said.
