But Fatas controlling and odd ways make him question his decision to take the job.
Stealing money from Medicare.
His wife had just taken a residency in radiology nearby.
Maunglay was going to work for Dr. Farid Fata, a bit of a local legend in oncology circles.
Instead, Maunglay is about to discover a truth so awful he can barely sleep.
As the Detroit Times put it later, Fata had to dispensed cruelty as casually as Tylenol.
But after this nauseating discovery Maunglay faces the professional challenge of a lifetime.
How can this young cancer doctor turn in his boss?
Who will believe him?
Hes about to risk everything hes ever worked for to save patients at the clinic from suffering.
Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
This is part 2 of our story Dr. Rotten.
If you didnt listen to part 1 kindly go back and do that.
Will Johnson is your host.
Peggy Pasado is joining us.
Peggy you could tell us more about it.
First of all, thanks for doing that.
[00:1:55] Peggy Pasado: You’re welcome.
Ah yes, I did, I did do that.
[00:01:58] Will Johnson: You are our Medicare expert because this stuff gets a little complicated.
Set the stage for us a little bit.
What does Medicare fraud mean, really?
I mean if you’re free to sort of give it a definition.
Sometimes it’s because it’s not medically necessary services.
Sometimes it’s non rendered services.
Sometimes it’s kickback, but all of these things all amount to false claims.
[00:02:41] Will Johnson: And who is responsible for the fraud?
[00:02:57] Peggy Pasado: Basically everybody.
Fraud is very impartial.
And the people who are doing that, um, are on the street.
Um, the ones in durable medical equipment, normally they aren’t even medical personnel.
I mean they could be janitors for god’s sakes.
[00:03:45] Will Johnson: All right.
Up next, part two of our three-part story.
He looked like a, just like, you know just like us.
Just like one very, one busy, tired doctor.
But before he ever started Maunglay ran into an odd situation.
Fata seemed to disappear.
[00:05:44] Dr. Maunglay: I was not able to get a hold of him.
He didn’t give me a start date.
I have, you know I have a contract without a beginning date.
This is, this is very, it was very bizarre.
I have to work for him.
[00:06:19] Will Johnson: But Dr. Soe Maunglay had signed a contract.
And he eventually got a start date in August 2012.
I always very careful with this guy.
Something is not right on the days that I start working.
So I think that’s, in the short, in the end that served me well.
As it turns out, Maunglay had just scratched the surface of Dr. Farid Fata.
[00:07:19] Dr. Maunglay: That was not happening in one or two locations.
Like I asked him, who’s there in those locations?
I was actually sent off to the locations that I would never, ever see him.
But the trouble was just starting.
You just, you’re able to’t work day in and day out.
If somebody called you in the middle of the night, you have to answer it.
[00:08:20] Will Johnson: But according to Maunglay, Dr. Fata never did that.
Any patient under Fata’s care stayed under his care.
If there was an issue or problem at any time of day, Fata would respond.
[00:08:38] Will Johnson: Oh wow.
[00:08:51] Dr. Maunglay: All of us have some level of key in A personality.
I thought he was over the top.
It will be very hard.
I said, you have to sign out your pager.
We need an answering service to arrange that and that was one of my requests.
[00:09:35] Dr. Maunglay: So you know, so you see the amount of tension already building.
I’m like, this guy just stop.
You’re asking to change the practice better and better.
It’s been successful for you know a long, long time.
[00:10:08] Will Johnson: So Maunglay has his patients, Fata has his.
And it stays that way.
Maunglay starts to notice some odd things.
He talks to other oncologists in the area.
This is how he does.
And it’s not like an unknown thing, it’s known to the whole community.
[00:11:23] Will Johnson: Along the way, Maunglay presents another idea to Dr. Fata.
He asks about submitting the practice for national oncology certification program.
[00:11:31] Dr. Maunglay: And he said, “We already have that certification.”
Like to my face.
[00:11:36] Will Johnson: But Maunglay knew for a fact that Fata’s practice was not certified.
I don’t really care about your opinion, and I’m lying to you.
You know that, I know that, and what do you want to do about it?
That’s, that’s the way I felt.
I’m like, oh my god, how do you like straight up lie, you know?
[00:12:01] Will Johnson: This all takes place less than a year after Maunglay joins the practice.
In June of 2013, less than 10 months after starting his job, he submits his resignation.
His last day is set for August 9th, 2013.
[00:12:21] Dr. Maunglay: Usually Dr. Fata never took time off.
He never takes vacations.
He went back to Lebanon.
I don’t know, just like last minute.
So uh, finally he had to leave the pager with me, his pager.
There is no, just mind you, there is no paging system.
There’s a physical like, like a black pager.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the doctors carry back in the day?
[00:12:58] Will Johnson: Sure, oh yeah.
[00:12:59] Dr. Maunglay: So that, so that’s what he carries.
You know my pagers come to my cell phone.
He actually hold a pager, and he has to give it to me.
So I carry that.
With Fata gone, Maunglay starts reviewing her charts.
We don’t know what it is.
I’m like, oh, what is the patient receiving?
I said, “Why did you receive chemotherapy?”
So she said, “I have multiple myeloma.”
[00:14:10] Dr. Maunglay: Something is not right.
You don’t have to do bone marrow biopsies.
you could follow with blood and urine tests.
[00:15:18] Dr. Maunglay: He told her that she has active multiple myeloma.
Nothing really has changed.
That he was planning to put her on this chemotherapy of the rest of her life.
I might be the first doctor who ever saw this.
I said, no, no, no.
This is not possible.
This is not possible, this is not possible.
And the next day I went and told the patient.
She doesn’t say why?
She said, “Okay, doc, I’ll do that.”
[00:16:13] Will Johnson: Maunglay realizes he has to act and act quickly.
Uh I decided to look into A to Z, and uh, and then something clicked.
Because you just can’t say in medicine this and that, and you need a real evidence.
[00:16:55] Dr. Maunglay: He said, “Okay, let’s cancel that.”
So that’s admission of guilt.
I will fight with everybody.
No, he stopped it immediately.
So it’s just admission of guilt, that’s all I needed.
[00:17:22] Will Johnson: For Dr. Maunglay, that was the last straw.
He approached the clinic’s office manager, George Karache.
I get the sense that he’s been burned before.
The aspects of the story told in the press didn’t match his experience.
He wants to double-check we get it right.
[00:17:50] (phone ring) George Karache: Hello.
[00:17:52] Will Johnson: George, it’s Will Johnson at AARP.
[00:17:55] George Karache: I’m fine, Will.
How are you doing?
[00:17:57] Will Johnson: Not bad.
[00:17:58] Will Johnson: George Karache actually had an experience as a whistleblower previously in his career.
Years before working as a sleep technician.
He’d only been on the job a few weeks when he noticed some billing irregularities and reported it.
[00:18:09] George Karache: Two, three years later that the FBI actually came to my door.
[00:18:12] Will Johnson: Oh, that long, okay.
Did they get busted for it?
[00:18:30] Will Johnson: Eventually he went to work for Dr. Farid Fata.
It had 50-foot ceilings, it had grand pianos, artwork.
So it took me aback at the opulence of the center.
Would you describe him as someone who treated his staff well?
Was he a friendly guy?
[00:19:39] George Karache: I wouldn’t go that far.
He didn’t want the doctors to mix and mingle, they were to stay where they were assigned.
And he says, “Yes, I am.”
And I said, I asked him, “Are you leaving?”
And he said, “Yes.”
And I said, “Can you tell me why?”
Everybody got used to them.
We didn’t, we didn’t realize how many microphones until later.
It must have been a chilling moment for you, or you also had your own suspicions.
[00:22:28] George Karache: No, no, no.
Many people had disagreements with him.
[00:22:45] Will Johnson: But the conservation stuck with Karache.
He decides to do his own investigation of sorts.
[00:22:50] George Karache: First thing I looked at is the patient consultation to treatment ratio.
So that is, how many, how many treatments did a patient receive per doctor, right?
And then compare that with Dr. Fata.
So if you’re seeing Dr. Fata, you were getting treatment, it was almost automatic.
[00:23:24] Will Johnson: He doesn’t stop there though.
He talks to an attorney that helped him years ago in George’s first whistleblower case.
[00:23:44] Will Johnson: Frustrated but undeterred, George goes back to Dr. Maunglay.
[00:23:47] George Karache: I explained to him that what you said took me aback.
And uh I want to know if you could elaborate on what we discussed?
And I said, “Well, can you share that with me?”
And he said he wouldn’t.
And I asked him, “Why.
Why wouldn’t you want to share that with me?”
George takes that information and goes to someone he knows and trusts, a nurse in the practice.
Do you know anything about the drug called IVIG?
And she, I remember her, this is very clear in my memory.
And her face turned like to stone, and she became sorrowful and then began to cry.
And she said to me, “Are we in trouble?”
And I said, “In trouble?
I don’t know if we’re in trouble or not.
[00:26:54] Will Johnson: The other nurse had given her resignation.
George wanted to talk to her next.
I mean if that’s the issue.”
And she said, “No, George, you don’t understand.
IVIG is just the tip of the iceberg.”
In addition to that, the patients didn’t know at all what was going on.
Which ones didn’t need chemotherapy?
Which ones were going to be harmed today if I didn’t do something about it right away?
I didn’t look at the center any more like a place that people came to be healed.
I looked at the center as a burning building.
He knows he has to do something more than just confront Farid Fata.
He has to go higher.
[00:28:34] Will Johnson: I’m back with Peggy Pasado.
Walk us through it in a little more detail.
How does it work?
I mean you basically are charging Medicare for something that a patient doesn’t need in some instances?
[00:28:52] Peggy Pasado: Or doesn’t get or doesn’t receive.
They’re, they’re not homebound.
Sometimes they make up the information that they put on the claim.
Uh those are the most common.
[00:29:43] Peggy Pasado: Exactly.
Is that, are there repercussions there or bad care?
[00:29:54] Peggy Pasado: The problem with it, the effect on it is non-existent.
I mean because they don’t even know what’s going on.
And I was asking her all these questions about being how she managed to do this and that?
And she said, “Oh, they told me to do this.”
I said, “Who told you to do this?”
So she proceeded to tell me about this home health agency coming.
And I said, “What do they do when they come here?”
“They clean my bathroom, they clean my kitchen, they’re very nice.”
Had nothing to do with medical.
And uh and join us again.
[00:31:28] Peggy Pasado: Sure.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For The Perfect Scam, I’m Will Johnson.
