Dearest readers, do you like word association games?  I do, because you can never give a wrong answer, as demonstrated here:

So let’s try it now:  Dr. Sana Ullah Khan.  Dr. Alexander Zaks.  Accident Help Line Medical Group.  Does Fraud come to mind with any (or all) of these?

State Compensation Insurance Fund, affectionately known as SCIF by those who are “in the know” (or can form names from the first letter of every word in an entity’s title) is claiming that Drs. Khan and Zaks participated in “patient mills”, submitting fraudulent claims and inflating workers’ compensation bills, even cooperating with Bruce McIntyre Roth, a SCIF in-house attorney at the time, to inflate settlement amounts.

Here’s hoping that Roth did not breach his duty of loyalty to his client/boss, SCIF.  Not that I know Mr. Roth personally, but the last thing any attorney in California wants to see is his profession smeared by a person who betrays the trust of his client – either through willful deception or through incompetence and neglect.  Rest assured, dear readers, the alleged conduct is by no means the norm, and the honor of the profession overall remains intact.

The numbers involved in this case are pretty big – we’re not talking about peanuts once the amounts claimed by SCIF include $2.4 million for translation services (which were not rendered) and additional bills for deep massages not offered by the doctors.

Have you had dealings with any of the players in this case?  If the defendants, Zaks, Khan, and Roth, actually did everything as alleged, it’s possible that they ripped off more insurers/employers than just SCIF.  After all, it has been alleged that employees were given bonuses based on the volume of procedures they assigned/prescribed/performed, regardless of the need or complaints of the patients.

So check your treating physicians and lien claimants – you might be able to knock out a few bills or at least hold off payment until this case is decided.