LA doctor, chiropractor indicted in $135M fraud scheme

Agents have announced a bust linked to alleged health care fraud. Gigi Graciette is live in Tarzana now with that story. Gigi. That's right. The FBI and the Department of Justice are moving in simultaneously across the county to make arrests, including here in this quiet hillside neighborhood above Tarzana. You're looking live at the home where Dr. Hani Malek was taken into custody early this morning, part of a health care fraud sweep. Now, take a look at the doctor. He's 61 years old. He's a chiropractor, and he's charged along with his business partner, 78-year-old Dr. Harold Tabai of Anaheim, a cardiothoracic surgeon. Both doctors indicted in a $135 million scheme to bill Medicare for what the Department of Justice says were medically unnecessary surgeries, arterial procedures on innocent patients who were convinced, they say, by the doctors that they needed the surgery. As alleged in the indictment, Tabai and Malek billed for those unnecessary atherectomies. That's an invasive procedure in which a bladed catheter is used to clear plaque from arteries. In a live interview this morning with us, U.S. Attorney General Bill Essex explained. This morning we executed an arrest warrant on an indictment. this gentleman, along with a co-defendant, were indicted on a $135 million fraud scheme where they were ordering surgeries and performing surgeries that were medically unnecessary, which actually resulted in people being harmed. And this is the worst type of healthcare fraud because you have doctors who are supposed to be doing no harm. They are putting their financial interests, again, over the interest of their patients to make money so they could live at nice mansions like this. Now, are the patients accused of being in on this? No. Or do these patients actually think that they needed surgery? They're victims in this. They were told by these medical professionals that they needed this operation. It's just to clear plaque in your arteries and your legs. And in fact, they performed it multiple times on the same people. And so they're victims in this. Again, this is all just to bill Medicare for millions and millions of dollars. And this is worth repeating what Bill Essex said, that some of the patients who the Department of Justice says are innocent victims in all of this had surgery performed on them by the surgeon working together with a chiropractor, they say, multiple times, not once, but several times, leaving some of those patients in continuous pain. And keep in mind, the Department of Justice says they never needed these invasive surgeries to begin with, So they are now worse off than they were in the beginning when they consulted with the chiropractor and the surgeon. Again, you're looking live here in Tarzana, a very rude awakening for neighbors as federal SWAT team members went in. They deployed what is known as flashbangs, very loud noises. So a lot of the neighbors here were calling 911 to report that they thought there was a shooting happening as their neighborhood was swarmed with federal agents. Now, later this morning, there is going to be a briefing for the media where we'll learn more about the other arrests. They were all conducted simultaneously, all of them at the same time. That is to prevent one suspect from calling another and giving them the heads up. Reporting live in Tarzana, I'm Gigi Graciette. Back to you. Yeah, Gigi. I mean, there's an entire team that's involved, if she can come back. There's an entire team that's involved when it comes to putting somebody under for surgeries and prepping them for the surgery. So you wonder how far this is gonna go, right? That's right. Any surgery involves multiple nurses, anesthesiologists, medical specialists. We don't know yet if any of those other people on the team were in on this. Just like the patients, they are innocent victims. They were enticed supposedly, that's what the indictment alleges. They were enticed to have this life-saving surgery. They were also given free transportation, gift cards. The Department of Justice has quite a file on what happened. Some of the Medicare patients were encouraged to switch policies to a better paying policy so that the doctors allegedly could get more money. So if you had one type of Medicare insurance, you were urged to switch to another one that had a higher payout for the doctors. All of these, of course, are allegations, Dr. Malek here, he was taken into custody this morning. He was heard saying, why are you doing this? Why didn't you just call my lawyer? He appears to have known that he was under some type of investigation because he repeatedly said, why didn't you just call my attorney? But he has been taken into custody. Another thing that as you're talking about this and we're gonna get more information, You think about how important it is to get that second, third opinion before you actually go through a surgery or something to do with your health because had they done that, perhaps they wouldn't have gone through with this. You know, there are two types of patients and you can't blame them because a lot of them thought, you know, oh my God, I need to clear plaque. Plaque in the arteries is one of the most dangerous things that could lead to a cardiovascular disease, a heart attack, a stroke, even more. There are two types of patients. There's the one who believe wholeheartedly in their doctors, understandably so. And then there's the type of patient like me that gets like five second opinions because she wants to make sure that if I'm going to have surgery, it's absolutely necessary. So yes, getting a second opinion, especially when it comes to surgery is always important no matter how much you trust your doctor and you should be able to trust your doctor. Surgery is a big thing. It is a big deal. And this type of surgery to clear plaque, I mean, that is a big, big deal. This is true. I mean, at its core, these doctors take this Hippocratic Oath, do no harm. You are supposed to be this trusted source and that is just a massive betrayal. Yeah, it really is. All right. More to come. Obviously, we have so many questions about this, Gigi. Thank you so much.