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SANTA ANA (CNS) - A Beverly Hills doctor and his girlfriend pleaded guilty Friday in connection with an insurance and workers' compensation fraud scheme.
Dr. Randy Rosen and co-defendant Liza Vismanos pleaded guilty and agreed to pay back $9.7 million in restitution.
Rosen, who has about four years of credit for time served behind bars since his arrest two years ago, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Vismanos was sentenced to one year in jail, but is expected to apply for house arrest and will be placed on three years of formal probation.
The restitution was possible because authorities seized assets belonging to the two.
Rosen was also involved in another fraud case in Orange County in which multiple defendants, including Rosen, got their charges tossed because a judge found an investigator breached attorney-client privilege.
Rosen pleaded guilty to recruiting patients to undergo medically unnecessary surgeries and billing insurance companies.
Vismanos owns the Wellness Wave surgical center in Beverly Hills and the Lotus Labs medical laboratory in Los Alamitos, according to investigators.
"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," investigators said in court papers when charges were filed.
"Rosen put his patients under anesthesia for these procedures in order to bill insurance for a major medical surgery at an approximate cost of $80,000 per procedure," according to investigators.
"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 said 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," according to investigators.
The "marketers" would "often pay the patients (oftentimes $500 to $2,000 per procedure) to incentivize them into returning to Rosen for multiple procedures," according to court papers.