Criminal Defense News

Four People in Pomona California Charges with Operating Bogus Medical Clinic That Defrauded Medicare

Three people were arrested today for their roles in a health care fraud scheme which involved transporting Medicare beneficiaries from across Southern California to a fraudulent clinic for unnecessary treatments and services. A fourth defendant, who was posing as a doctor at the clinic, is being sought by the FBI, announced J. Stephen Tidwell, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI in Los Angeles and Gerald T. Roy, Special Agent in Charge for Health and Human Services; Office of the Inspector General.

Those arrested today are: Terry Lee Hill, 47, of San Bernardino; Natasha Sherrill Walker, 36, of Los Angeles; and Gertha Ree Green,71, of San Bernardino. The fugitive currently sought by the FBI is Betros Garabet, 40 of Glendale, whose photo and description are being released to the media.

Garabet, Hill, Walker and Green were named in an indictment returned February 7 by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles. The indictment charges Garabet, Hill and Walker with seven counts of health care fraud. Green was charged with making a false statement to the FBI about her participation in the health care fraud scheme.

According to the indictment, Garabet opened a medical clinic in Pomona and posed as a medical doctor, though he was not licensed to practice medicine. Garabet allegedly paid illegal cash kickbacks to Hill, Walker, and others for their participation in the scheme, which involved transporting Medicare beneficiaries from San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles counties to the fraudulent clinic. The patients were taken to the clinic for unnecessary treatments, which included diagnostic testing and examinations. Garabet then allegedly billed Medicare for services which in some cases were never performed. The recruited Medicare beneficiaries, who were shared among Hill and other marketers, were often elderly or disadvantaged citizens, including patients suffering from mental illness.

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	Did You Know?
	Res Ipsa Loquitur - Literally, "a thing that speaks for itself." In tort law, the doctrine which holds a defendant guilty of negligence without an actual showing that he or she was negligent. Its use is limited in theory to cases in which the cause of the plaintiff's injury was entirely under the control of the defendant, and the injury presumably could have been caused only by negligence.