A Beverly Hills doctor and a woman investigators described as his wife, the owner of a Los Alamitos-based laboratory, are behind bars Monday on charges of stealing about $52 million in an alleged insurance fraud scheme.
Dr. Randy Rosen, who was involved in a civil federal lawsuit involving a health care fraud scheme at a Long Beach hospital that was settled in 2017, was being held on $52 million bail along with co-defendant Liza Vismanos, who are both scheduled to be arraigned Thursday when a judge will also consider lowering their bail.
Rosen's attorney, Harland Braun, ridiculed the amount of bail.
"How can you have bail of $52 million when murder is $1 million bail," Braun said.
Vismanos' attorney, Paul Meyer, declined comment.
According to a motion to increase the pair's bail, investigators alleged Rosen was "indicted for his role in a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme and is currently out on bail for that case."
Braun said Rosen was involved in another case in Orange County Superior Court in which a judge found an investigator breached attorney-client privilege and that case is pending.
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Investigators also said Rosen was married to Vismanos, but Braun said that was inaccurate. He said Vismanos is his client's girlfriend, but they are not married. The two live together and have two children, according to the bail motion.
Vismanos owns the Wellness Wave surgical center in Beverly Hills and the Lotus Labs medical laboratory in Los Alamitos, according to the bail motion.
"In approximately June 2017, Rosen/Vismanos entered into a fraud scheme specifically targeting patients from addiction recovery rehabs to bill their private medical insurance carriers primarily for two types of procedures; a non-FDA approved Naltrexone implant and Cortisone injections," according to the bail motion.
"Rosen put his patients under anesthesia for these procedures in order to bill insurance for a major medical surgery at an approximate cost of $80,000 per procedure," according to the bail motion.
"Per Rosen's records he performed these procedures in as little as one-minute increments with as many as 72 procedures per day. Additionally, Rosen collected blood and urine from his patients, which was processed at Lotus Labs at a cost of approximately $4,000 per day after the procedure with no known medical necessity."
Investigators allege 18 insurance companies were billed from June 2017 to May 2019 $661,940,464 and the two received $51,060,523.
The two are also accused of using two "body-broker" groups that would "sell Rosen patients in exchange for a kickback of the insurance proceeds," the bail motion alleges.
The "marketers" would "often pay the patients (oftentimes $500 to $2,000 per procedure) to incentivize them into returning to Rosen for multiple procedures," the bail motion alleges.
Investigators also allege "at least 35 of Rosen's patients involved in this scheme have passed away, many by overdose," according to the bail motion.
Investigators also said the alleged scheme was the subject of a local news report in July 2018 that "focused on the death of a patient," but "despite this attention Rosen/Vismanos continued with their fraud scheme, continued paying kickbacks and patients continued to die."
