Feds busted Los Angeles medical fraudsters accused of stealing $2 billion Thursday, cuffing white-collar thieves for unneeded surgeries, hunting the homeless for rehabs and billing the government for phony hospice care.
Read more at https://nypost.com/2026/10/22/us-news/feds-raid-la-mansion-in-massive-2b-california-medical-fraud-scheme/
#losangeles #raid #medical #fraud
Feds bust $2 billion California medical fraud rings, and taxpayers get the bill again.
Federal agents hit Los Angeles before dawn on October 22, 2026. They charged 15 people, six of them medical professionals, in schemes that sent more than $1.8 billion in fake claims to Medicare, Medi-Cal, and private insurers. Reports put the total near $2 billion. Eight were arrested that morning. The biggest piece alone is the largest substance-abuse treatment fraud case the Justice Department has ever brought.
The main operation belonged to father and son David Young, 71, and Nathan Young, 39, both of Los Angeles. Prosecutors say they ran dozens of treatment companies and used “body brokers,” including Honey Phipps, 42, and Cody Phipps, 36, of Greenville, Texas. The brokers hunted vulnerable people—homeless, poor, or sitting in 12-step meetings—whose insurance paid the most. Recruiters offered free flights, cash, apartments, hotel stays, cars, gift cards, marijuana, cigarettes, and prescription drugs. Some patients were signed up for insurance they did not qualify for.
🚨 @AAGMcDonald announces Los Angeles Health Care Fraud Takedown results in charges against 15 defendants, including 6 medical professionals, $1.8 BILLION loss ⬇️ https://t.co/NE2D7ZSwdj
— National Fraud Enforcement Division (@DOJFraudDiv) October 22, 2026
Once they landed in Southern California, the promises often evaporated. High-value patients got nicer housing. Others ended up in cramped, dirty “trap houses.” Real treatment was scarce. Staff were told to drug patients who tried to leave so billing could continue. Text messages show Nathan Young telling an employee to give a detox patient marijuana off-site so the person would stay and keep generating claims. “Therapy” sometimes meant Zoom calls with more than a hundred people who only had to turn their cameras on and could “lay out on the beach.” Patients were recycled through the system whether they needed care or not. The operation billed over $1.6 billion.
A second case targeted Medicare for unnecessary artery procedures. Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Harold Tabaie, 78, of Anaheim, and chiropractor Hany Malek, 61, of Tarzana, allegedly ran clinics that billed roughly $134 million. Malek is accused of wearing a lab coat, posing as a doctor, and diagnosing patients with artery disease they did not have. Tabaie then performed atherectomies—an invasive procedure that uses a bladed catheter to scrape plaque from arteries. Some patients got the surgery more than once after earlier ones failed. Officials say several suffered extreme pain. The pair were flagged because data showed Tabaie as an extreme national outlier for the number of these procedures. Malek was arrested at his gated Tarzana mansion after agents scaled fences and used flash-bangs.
Early this morning, the FBI and our partners arrested 8 of 15 defendants in Southern California, Dallas and Chicago, for their roles in health care schemes that collectively resulted in $2 billion in fraudulent claims to government and private health care programs, including sham substance abuse treatment programs, unnecessary artery treatments, and bogus hospice services. Two of the 15 defendants were arrested last week.
“Today the FBI and our partners executed 8 arrests, with 7 additional defendants charged, after the subjects involved allegedly orchestrated a multi-year healthcare fraud scheme resulting in $1.8 billion in losses,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “The defendants – including medical professionals – made fraudulent claims to steal from taxpayer funded healthcare and insurance programs, including substance abuse treatment programs, hospice care, and Medicare programs in the Los Angeles area designed to help the most vulnerable. Under President Trump’s leadership with the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, stealing from American taxpayers will no longer be tolerated in this country. This FBI will continue to move aggressively with our Department of Justice to dismantle fraud networks stealing from hard working taxpayers.”
“Healthcare fraud cheats American taxpayers and health care programs out of billions of dollars,” said Patrick Grandy, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “The FBI will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to do everything in our power to safeguard our government health care programs and the taxpayers picking up the bill.”
@IRS_CI @USAO_LosAngeles @HHS @DEALosAngeles
Additional details: https://t.co/Xw7KgVw5tW
— FBI Los Angeles (@FBILosAngeles) October 22, 2026
Three hospice schemes added more than $138 million in claims for patients who were not dying. Another defendant faces charges in a $270 million Medi-Cal pharmacy fraud involving bogus prescriptions. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli called it the worst kind of fraud: doctors who swore to do no harm putting money ahead of patients. FBI Director Kash Patel linked the arrests to the Trump administration’s White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud and said stealing from taxpayers will not be tolerated. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald said data analytics will keep finding the schemes.
This is not the first California medical fraud case. Earlier this year the same district charged people in hundreds of millions more in Medi-Cal pharmacy and hospice schemes. Southern California has become a known hotspot for rehab fraud, patient brokering, and hospice abuse. The pattern is familiar: recruit the vulnerable, invent or exaggerate the need for care, bill the highest possible rate, and keep the money. Taxpayers and legitimate patients absorb the cost through higher premiums, wasted program dollars, and fewer resources for people who actually need help.
Federal agents just executed a healthcare fraud takedown California where a doctor and surgeon stole $135 million taxpayer dollars by ordering and performing surgeries that were medically unnecessary, causing harm to patients just to defraud Medicare.
I believe my son Salias nearly became a victim of this because when he was 2 moths old an ENT demanded he get emergency surgery to remove a growth-mass in his throat that would permanently damage his vocal cords and when I went to seek answers elsewhere, a different ENT said that would be a horrible thing to do and “that ENT just wants to get his name into journals.”
I was FURIOUS but now I wonder if he would have gotten kickbacks for said surgery that would have taken my son’s voice from him! 😡
— Bridgett Fertig (@LightOnLiberty) October 22, 2026
The October 22 charges show federal investigators following the money and the data. Whether the recovery matches the scale of the losses remains to be seen. The schemes ran for years while the bills piled up. American taxpayers keep footing the bill for the next round until the people running them face real consequences. Whatfinger News is tracking the court dates and the rest of the cases.
— The Whatfinger News Team: Sgt L and Luke, with Grok on edits
Top Features and Vids across Whatfinger
- When you have a ‘trustworthy’ currency, rates go down ‘naturally’: Steve Forbes
- They Drilled 60 Feet Into Noah’s Ark and Found THIS
- Abdul El-Sayed Is COLLAPSING at the RIGHT TIME!
- President Donald Trump GOES NUCLEAR At Leftist ATTACK On Rally & Assassin ARRESTED
- MAKE IT STOP: The Immigration Grift Is Turning America Into Something Else
- Same Impossible Clues on Every Continent: What the Stones Still Refuse to Explain on A Past Massive Civilization
Get on over to Whatfinger.com – Whatfinger News does millions of pageviews a month for a reason…. Truth, Justice, the American way, plus news on the Left as well – all links from all sites gives you the true news. – CLICK HERE 🛑
