Indictments revealed in alleged comp medication scam
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A California judge has unsealed indictments against eight people accused of operating an international conspiracy to defraud the California workers compensation system of more than $123 million.
In March 2017, the district attorney’s offices of Riverside and San Bernardino counties began an investigation into what they called “sham clinics,” which were later found to be seeing thousands of injured workers and prescribing “nearly all of them the same high-priced cocktail of unnecessary medications, regardless of the patient’s condition,” according to a statement released Wednesday by the Riverside office.
“Many of the medications were produced by pharmacies under the control of the defendants and the patients often received little, if any, of the medication they were prescribed,” according to the statement.
Indicted in the case and slated for court appearances throughout February are: Kenneth Amodeo, a pharmacist in Agoura Hills, California; Rosa Bernal of Covina, California; Shannon Devane of Downey, California; Janek Hunt of Estonia, California; Edgar Lozano of Porter Ranch, California; Matthew Rifat, an attorney in El Cajon, California; Hector Sandoval of Sherman Oaks, California; and Munir Uwaydah, an unlicensed physician from Lebanon, California, who has been under indictment in Los Angeles in a “related case” since 2015, according to the district attorney’s office.
All are charged with a variety of counts including conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering for funneling proceeds from the “scam through a network shell companies, ultimately sending the money to co-conspirators throughout Southern California, Europe, and the Middle East,” according to the statement.
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