Month: June 2018

LOS ANGELES – In another massive law enforcement action targeting health care fraud, federal authorities here announced today criminal cases naming a total of 33 defendants – including doctors, pharmacists and an attorney – who have been charged in a wide-range of schemes that collectively attempted to bilk public and private insurance programs out of more than $660 million.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex M. Azar III, announced today the largest ever health care fraud enforcement action involving 601 charged defendants across 58 federal districts, including 165 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals, for their alleged participation in health care fraud schemes involving more than $2 billion in false billings. Of those charged, 162 defendants, including 76 doctors, were charged for their roles in prescribing and distributing opioids and other dangerous narcotics. Thirty state Medicaid Fraud Control Units also participated in today’s arrests. In addition, HHS announced today that from July 2017 to the present, it has excluded 2,700 individuals from participation in Medicare, Medicaid, and all other Federal health care programs, which includes 587 providers excluded for conduct related to opioid diversion and abuse.

A 39-year-old man has been charged with sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl at a wedding reception in Valencia, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced.

A 77-year-old man was charged today with murdering a Long Beach fire captain and wounding two others after he allegedly set off an explosive device, causing a blaze at a senior housing complex where he lived, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced.

The Department of Justice announced today that it will require The Walt Disney Company to divest 22 Regional Sports Networks (“RSNs”) as a condition of its $71.3 billion acquisition of certain assets from Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc.

Tokuo Tatai, an executive of Japan-based capacitor manufacturer Elna Co. Ltd., pleaded guilty for his role in a conspiracy to fix prices and rig bids for electrolytic capacitors sold to customers in the United States and elsewhere, the Department of Justice announced today.

SANTA ANA, California – A disbarred California attorney who previously pleaded guilty in a mortgage modification scheme that defrauded about 75 distressed Orange County homeowners out of more than $1 million was sentenced today to four years in federal prison.

SANTA ANA, California – Two men who participated in a series of armed bank robberies attributed to the “Bladed Bandit” because one of the robbers brandished a large knife each have pleaded guilty in federal court to multiple counts of armed robbery.

SANTA ANA, Calif. – A man was charged today with pimping and pandering two women in Irvine after he had been released from custody on bail for vandalism.

SANTA ANA, Calif. – A caretaker was convicted and sentenced to eight years and eight months in state prison today for stealing approximately $1 million from an 88-year-old man with dementia.