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54 OUTPATIENT SURGERY Riverside Regional Surgery Center owner, 3 others charged in $8M healthcare fraud scheme: 5 things to know By Laura Dyrda B abar Iqbal, MD, and three others were arrested March 8 on felony charges, alleging the co-conspirators were involved in an $8 million healthcare fraud scheme, according to e Press-Enterprise. Here are five things to know. 1. Dr. Iqbal, who heads Riverside (Calif.) Re- gional Surgery Center, and three others are accused of devising a scheme to bill insurance for care under false pretenses. An official for Springfield, Ill.-based Hospital Sisters Health System recommended $5 million be set aside for an insurance plan that would cover needy patients and received a $1 million kickback in addition to a home purchase for the recom- mendation. However, when the patients arrived at River- side Regional Surgery Center claiming to be employees of an organization called King- makers, allegedly a shell company formed to funnel patients through, Dr. Iqbal told them Medi-Cal wouldn't cover treatment and ad- vised them to sign up for a free health insur- ance policy. 2. UnitedHealthcare owned the free health in- surance policy and paid $1 million on those claims; at the same time, $500,000 was given to Riverside Regional Surgery Center and put into an unlicensed charity. e money was delivered as written checks, sometimes indi- cating they were donations, but the prosecu- tors claim the checks were kickbacks. 3. Investigators claim the defendants in total received $5 million in donations made under false pretenses, as well as $3 million in illegal kickbacks. One of the alleged co-conspirators has already spent time in a federal prison for his role in a $20 million mortgage fraud scheme. 4. Dr. Iqbal and the others face 33 counts of criminal charges, including grand the, mon- ey laundering and tax evasion in addition to the healthcare fraud and conspiracy charges. Bail for Dr. Iqbal was set at $3 million. 5. e California District Attorney and Cal- ifornia Department of Insurance first began investigating Riverside Regional Surgery Center aer 22 of 23 alleged Kingmakers em- ployees received treatment there "within five weeks of getting health insurance policy, with initial claims totaling $4 million." n learn more at titanSpine.com and #StandWiththeFuture in Fact, We're obSeSSed With it. by mimicking natural bone, our nanolock ® SurFace technology iS able to begin the mechaniSmS oF bone groWth the moment it haS been implanted. brought to you by titan Spine, naturally. N A T U R A L L Y. W E K N O W B O N E, Copyright © , 2015 Titan Spine, LLC