Julian Omidi, 54, of West Hollywood, and his firm Beverly Hills-based Surgery Center Management, were convicted of wire and mail fraud.
LOS ANGELES — The former operator of the now-defunctwas sentenced Monday to seven years behind bars for using fabricated sleep studies to persuade insurance companies to pay out tens of millions of dollars for Lap-Band surgery.
SCM was sentenced to five years probation. Fines and restitution are to be determined at a hearing in June. Prosecutors told the Los Angeles federal court jury that Omidi created a process that turned “patients into profits” by directing employees to “falsely diagnose patients with a sleep disorder they didn’t have.”
According to federal prosecutors, Omidi decided every patient would get a sleep study, and the scheme “got the patients in the door with false promises, gave them false hope, and billed their insurance companies with false claims.” Relying on the falsified studies, as well as other bogus information, including patients’ heights and weights, insurance companies authorized payment for many of the proposed Lap-Band surgeries. Prosecutors said GET THIN received at least $38 million for the Lap-Band procedures.
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