Doctor receives praise - and a sentence for fraud

A POPULAR Seattle-area physician and one-time radio host admits cheating Medicaid and insurers by providing incorrect information about patient visits.

Watching Dr. Nasser Ordoubadi in the federal court hallway, surrounded by a throng offering condolences and hugs, it would be easy to peg him as a victim - which many of his admirers believe he is.

But he's not - and admits he's not - although that made little difference to more than 100 supporters who crowded into a standing-room-only courtroom yesterday to watch Ordoubadi be sent to prison for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.

Federal prosecutors admitted they'd never seen a turnout like the one in U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein's courtroom yesterday. In addition, Rothstein said she'd received hundreds of letters of support for the doctor.

The judge acknowledged the contention by defense attorney Peter Mair that Ordoubadi was a good doctor and a good man who made a mistake.

"But my job is to address the side that broke the law, and broke it repeatedly for a long, long time," Rothstein said.

In the end, the judge sentenced Ordoubadi to a maximum of 35 months in prison and ordered him to pay $400,000 in restitution for what court documents call an "audacious fraud scheme" involving Seattle-area medical clinics.

Three of his clinic workers received lesser sentences involving home confinement and probation.

Ordoubadi, who was indicted last year on 33 counts following a two-year investigation, pleaded guilty to two counts, understanding he would go to prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Loitz said it was the longest prison sentence ever handed a doctor in an insurance-fraud scheme in Western Washington.

The 44-year-old Ordoubadi, who once hosted the popular "Medicine Man" call-in show on KOMO radio, had systematically overbilled or misled Medicaid, the state and a host of health-insurance providers for years.

According to Loitz, Ordoubadi would regularly bill the companies for physician visits when his patients hadn't seen him or had seen some other health-care provider who would have been billed at a lower rate.

There were instances, Loitz told the judge, that he billed as if he had seen the patients when he actually had sent them to chiropractors, physician assistants and in a few cases a personal trainer.

He also billed under the name of a doctor who had left the five General Medical Clinics that Ordoubadi had bought from him. The plea also involved Ordoubadi's work at the WellNet clinics.

"He would please his patients by having insurance pay for things it shouldn't," Loitz said. Ordoubadi apologized to the court, and Mair, his attorney, assured the judge that "whatever it is the court imposes, it will be a devastating sentence." In addition to the criminal case, Ordoubadi faces numerous civil lawsuits and the possible revocation of his license.

None of this matters to his supporters, several of whom insisted he had saved or improved their lives. They faulted the insurance industry for leading the doctor astray through stingy and labyrinthine practices.

After the hearing, Ordoubadi held a tearful patient's hands and said "heal yourself . . . heal yourself" as 82-year-old Margaret Von Wrangel explained that Ordoubadi had "made a new life" for her.

"It's a crime to society to have a man I call the people's doctor go to prison," added George Gregg.

But Rothstein, in pronouncing the sentence, said that whatever good Ordoubadi has done has to be weighed against his crimes.

"The overall effect . . . on society as a whole is harmful - extremely harmful," she said.