George, the practices office manager, has gathered enough evidence to bring the case to the authorities.
It lands of the desk of Agent Drake during his first week with the FBIs health care fraud team.
Investigators are disgusted by what they find and work to bring Fata to justice.
Medicare Scam Part 3
[00:00:00] Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
For the past two weeks, weve been bringing you the story of Dr. Farid Fata.
His thriving oncology practice in Michigan holds a dark secret.
Hes been giving patients expensive chemotherapy treatments they dont need.
Sometimes even perfectly healthy patientsjust to collect big Medicare checks.
The story is so important, we dug it out from the archives.
Karadsheh is about to go to the FBI.
Will they believe him?
And now, the conclusion of our 3-part series: Dr. Rotten.
Will Johnson is your host.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:53] Will Johnson: Welcome back to AARP - The Perfect Scam.
And the third part of our three-part series on Dr. Farid Fata.
Thanks for joining us once again.
[00:01:11] Peggy Pasado: Thank you, my pleasure.
[00:01:21] Peggy Pasado: Yes, it was, it’s very serious.
[00:01:30] Peggy Pasado: Right.
Why is it relatively easy for healthcare professionals to submit bogus claims to Medicare?
It seems like that should be something that, that shouldn’t be happening, right?
Medicare’s a federal healthcare program funded by the Medicare Trust Fund, operative word, “trust.”
This is supported by your payroll taxes, general tax revenues and premiums.
Every day, 5 million claims are submitted to Medicare.
There is, the analysis starts immediately once it goes through.
I think that’s about the only thing you could do.
[00:03:52] Peggy Pasado: It’s impartial.
Medicare fraud hits everything.
[00:04:04] Peggy Pasado: Okay.
He knows he has to do more than confront him.
He decides to take his case to the FBI where it lands on the desk of Agent Bryan Drake.
So it’s like, I, “I can’t imagine that this is real.
This sounds just so over the top.”
They spend two or three hours with George Karadsheh.
This, this can’t be true.
But at the time, she was Deputy Chief of the healthcare fraud unit.
The allegations were very serious, very disturbing.
They either, theyre the ones who told me and saw this."
Drake asked his partners if this was at all normal.
This is going to change your life for the next couple of years."
Um, and it did.
[00:07:24] Will Johnson: That turned out to be true.
[00:07:25] Agent Drake: 100%.
And so, we knew that that was our deadline.
[00:08:14] Will Johnson: So you had Friday afternoon, the weekend, and Monday.
[00:08:16] Agent Drake: Yes.
[00:08:17] Will Johnson: Investigators had their work cut out for them.
They were literally racing against time.
Um, he’s like, “I don’t know how he’s getting away with this.
This guy is, is definitely wrong in the way he’s practicing medicine.”
[00:08:37] Will Johnson: But they needed more than the whistleblower and the expert.
They interviewed all of the employees identified in the whistleblower report.
Are they friends inside work?
Are they friends outside work?
Do they email each other?
Do they text message each other?"
And he said, “Yeah, they’re all pretty gossipy.”
We might probably never understand that.
I mean he was born and raised in Lebanon.
He was educated there.
An operational plan was going into effect as well, regarding how they’d apprehend Fata.
Early Tuesday morning, around 4:30, they wake up a judge to get a warrant.
[00:10:39] Agent Drake: Yes.
You don’t, you don’t experience it.
[00:10:46] Agent Drake: So we finally get there, and they’re calling him out.
We’re like a mile and a half away.
He’s, he’s backing out of his driveway."
I’m like, oh man, we’re not going to make this.
Uh, and so he starts to drive out.
He runs the stop sign at his entrance.
They pull him over, as they pull him over, I’m jumping out of the car.
We raced into the parking lot.
I raised my hand, I’m like, “It’s me.”
He pulls him over and I was able to put the cuffs on him and walk him away.
[00:11:25] Will Johnson: Drake tells Fata he’s under arrest and takes him to his car.
I didn’t feel anything from this guy.
He didn’t seem, he seemed like, aloof is the best word to describe it.
He didn’t, he didn’t come across as somebody who knew why we were there at all.
After they asked him, “Why do you think you’ve been arrested?”
And his response was, “I, I ran a stop sign.
I think that’s why I was arrested.”
It’s all part of a careful plan.
The US Attorney’s Office had reached out to other cancer centers across metro Detroit.
Would you guys be able to handle this?"
And they said, “Yes.”
Or a lot of people.
Or at least in the coming days and weeks as they found out results of new tests maybe.
[00:12:46] Agent Drake: Absolutely.
He’d been diagnosed by Dr. Fata and had been getting treatments for 212 years.
He remembers when he heard the news.
I go, “No.
I’ve got it on TBN.”
She goes, “Well here, you gotta come see this.”
Well that’s when they show he got arrested that morning.
The uh FBI went in and grabbed all his uh offices and stuff and arrested him for fraud.
That’s all we heard.
I was, wow, okay.
Well about two hours later I get a phone call from the FBI.
They wanted to come out here and talk to me in person.
The Department of Justice and the FBI.
So I said, okay.
[00:14:38] Will Johnson: Robert still has a hard time talking about it.
He went to see a new oncologist.
You don’t have anything wrong with you.
You definitely don’t have cancer."
And my wife and I just about feel to the ground.
What, what’s going to happen to me now?
My wife, first thing my wife asked was, “What about all those injections?
What’s going to happen?
Is that causing all your teeth to fall out?”
He goes, “Whatever they gave you, is doing you in.”
Going off the meds was just as bad, or worse.
[00:15:45] Robert Soberay: I thought I was going to die.
I was looking forward to it, just you know take me out, c’mon.
I hurt, I, I was sick.
I couldn’t keep nothing down.
I goes, “Well I ever be better than I was?”
He goes, “No.
You’ll never be like you were.”
[00:16:20] Will Johnson: The horrific truth was finally coming out.
Sarah Cohen with the US Attorney’s Office.
[00:17:05] Will Johnson: Barbara McQuade with the US Attorney’s Office.
There were some patients who would need say a vial and a quarter of chemotherapy who truly had cancer.
You know, for people who might have benefited simply from an iron supplement.
He’s like, “Why?
You don’t need to get a second opinion.
I have, I have experience here.
My mom was diagnosed with this cancer and she died from this cancer.
This is something that’s near and dear to me.”
And she said, “Yes.”
He was saying this to stage 4 pancreatic cancer patients.
[00:19:11] Agent Drake: That’s correct.
[00:19:29] Will Johnson: Fata had violated the sacred trust between doctor and patient.
For Dr. Soe Maunglay who would come forward with evidence of Fata’s crimes, the truth was unbelievable.
Because the cancer patient will see you more than they see their cousins.
[00:19:55] Will Johnson: The truth was hard to swallow.
Barbara McQuade with the US Attorney’s Office.
[00:20:09] Barbara McQuade: We were able to document 515 patients who were abused in some way.
Some who were falsely diagnosed with having cancer who didn’t, others who received excessive treatments.
[00:20:48] Angela Swantek: The patients never had a chance.
They died unnecessarily, they probably would have lived you know longer in a better quality of life.
Nursing was in hot demand.
Unlike Fata, they did not face criminal charges.
As news of Fata’s crimes spread, court hearings came and went, and a trial date approached.
Fata did plead guilty in September 2014, just over a year after his arrest.
[00:21:31] Will Johnson: In July 2015, a sentencing hearing is scheduled.
Angela Swantek was at the hearing.
[00:21:43] Angela Swantek: It truly was like sitting through, uh I can’t even remember.
It was like sitting through you know 20 eulogies.
And it was, it was very offensive.
What if it was your family that you did, this was done to?
Your son, your daughter, your wife?
And he wouldn’t even look at me.
Would not even look at me, when I made my statement.
He just turned away.
He did not show any remorse.
He did not care one thing about people, about the people.
No, he was concerned about him going to jail.
That’s all he was concerned about.
Or how many years he got.
It was, it was a big, a big farce, the whole thing.
[00:23:20] Barbara McQuade: The judge asked him why he had done it.
And he said, “Out of greed.”
Which I understood, but then he also said something interesting.
He said, “And out of power.”
He seemed to enjoy having the position of power over his patients and sort of controlling their destiny.
That was something I’d never heard before.
Greed you hear a lot from defendants.
I had never heard that someone had enjoyed harming people through this position of power.
[00:23:51] Sarah Cohen: The district judge sentenced Fata to 45 years in a federal prison.
Among them, Robert Soberay.
Automatic, it should have been life.
45 years, he’s still got a very slight chance of walking out of there.
I’m waiting for that day.
He was harming them, he was killing them, he was poisoning them.
And what ultimately got him arrested was all about the money.
[00:25:29] Will Johnson: Yeah.
And what kind of response did you get?
[00:25:31] Angela Swantek: It’s just hard to prove.
They said it was hard to prove that that’s what his intent was.
[00:25:40] Angela Swantek: Yes, he’s going to be, he’ll die there.
[00:26:15] Will Johnson: The US Attorney’s Office is still working on restitution for the patients.
A special facilitator was hired to work with victims.
Fata’s plea deal included over 500 victims, but the total number of victims will never be known.
Many of the patients got to know Angela Swantek after Fata’s arrest and went to her for help.
Where’s the bone marrow biopsy?
Most all of them said, no evidence of cancer but Fata told them that they did.
I don’t care what doctor it is.
Question everything they do for you.
Get on the internet and look it up, cause it’ll help you out 100%.
Dr. Soe Maunglay is now practicing in California.
He says the impact of Fata’s crimes is still being felt.
[00:27:59] Dr. Maunglay: This was a very big hit on medical oncology.
He did harm way more than that.
[00:28:44] Will Johnson: Robert Soberay is angry too.
you’re free to hear it in his voice.
And um, I apologize.
I, you know, go ahead, I’m sorry.
[00:29:02] Will Johnson: Robert’s doing better today though.
He’s taking 16 medications instead of the 23 he took a few years ago.
I was really bad off.
Robert eventually found out what that missing bone really was.
No, just a little blur on the x-ray is all it was.
Uh, that part was blackened out, but looked like something was missing.
And they swear up and down.
[00:30:08] George Karadsheh: Why would he throw this all away?
Those are the kind of questions I tried to ask myself.
I didn’t have the answer.
[00:30:26] Will Johnson: George still doesnt have an answer.
If anything, he’s learned that doing the right thing can life-altering consequences.
But when you do, the consequences are very harsh.
I don’t know anybody who’s a whistleblower and wasn’t fired from the job.
I was included in that.
Effectively I gave up my position and my career.
[00:31:45] Will Johnson: I’m back with Peggy Pasado.
[00:32:17] Peggy Pasado: Yes, I helped.
[00:32:24] Will Johnson: Right, running the numbers and paying close attention.
I mean it’s all types.
And the majority of them are all very, very high dollar and very egregious fraud.
He was giving the medication that the patients didn’t need.
On all of these things he was making money, okay?
How will the patient know?
The patient wouldn’t know.
The patient, you know, the labs wouldn’t know what the circumstances were.
So he was free and clear as far as nobody knew what he was doing.
Nobody apparently got a second opinion, or you know understood the depth.
So he kept his card fairly close, and he owned a total of 7 companies.
And they all supported him.
I mean all the, all the money that he was pushing through those companies came back to him.
So that’s how he made money.
So there’s a, there’s a certain amount of, of fear.
I don’t know who to talk to.
I don’t know where to go.
And that’s another trick they play, is nobody knows the whole story.
Where do we stand?
[00:35:39] Peggy Pasado: Absolutely.
They want to help other people.
Thanks again for sharing…
[00:36:20] Peggy Pasado: Thank you.
[00:36:21] Will Johnson: … sharing all your thoughts and expertise (inaudible).
[00:36:24] Peggy Pasado: Thank you.
It’s been a pleasure.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For The Perfect Scam, Im Will Johnson.
