A California grand jury has indicted Kareem Ahmed, a major donor to President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, and 15 of Ahmed's associates in an alleged multimillion-dollar insurance kickback scheme.
Ahmed, the president and CEO of a company called Landmark Medical Management, is accused of masterminding the scheme and faces charges including conspiracy, insurance fraud, and, most dramatically, involuntary manslaughter, according to one of two sealed indictments issued by an Orange County grand jury both dated June 17 and obtained this week by TPM.
The first of the two indictments accused Ahmed of developing topical cream formulas "based on the profitability of the ingredients," and then giving doctors who treated workers' compensation patients illegal financial incentives to prescribe the creams. The scheme, which ran from 2009-2013, also involved filing false claims with multiple insurance companies, the nine-count indictment alleges.
The indictment provides few details on the involuntary manslaughter charge, alleging only that Ahmed, a pharmacist named Michael Rudolph, and a doctor named Andrew Jarminiski (who are both charged along with Ahmed in the first indictment) "did unlawfully and without malice kill Andrew G. (a minor), a human being, in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner and without due caution and circumspection."
TPM's attempts to contact Rudolph and lawyers for Ahmed and Jarminiski were unsuccessful on Thursday. In a statement emailed to TPM on Friday, Landmark Medical Management human resources manager, Ladonna Hieber, said that Ahmed and his staff "are innocent of all charges that have been alleged. The charges are meritless and we expect full exoneration of any wrongdoing." Southern California Public Radio, which first reported on the indictment, reported late Thursday that the The Orange County prosecutor's office declined to comment to SCPR because the indictments remain under seal.
In an extensive profile in 2012, TPM first reported about Ahmed's business practices, which officials and workers compensation experts in California have had suspicions about for years. In his initial interview with TPM, in his Ontario, California office in August of that year, Ahmed agreed to meet only if his lawyer were present and the interview was off the record. In a subsequent on-the-record phone interview, Ahmed was wary of providing details about how his business worked.
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/kareem-ahmed-obama-donor-indicted#ixzz35CIQB28e
Ahmed, the president and CEO of a company called Landmark Medical Management, is accused of masterminding the scheme and faces charges including conspiracy, insurance fraud, and, most dramatically, involuntary manslaughter, according to one of two sealed indictments issued by an Orange County grand jury both dated June 17 and obtained this week by TPM.
The first of the two indictments accused Ahmed of developing topical cream formulas "based on the profitability of the ingredients," and then giving doctors who treated workers' compensation patients illegal financial incentives to prescribe the creams. The scheme, which ran from 2009-2013, also involved filing false claims with multiple insurance companies, the nine-count indictment alleges.
The indictment provides few details on the involuntary manslaughter charge, alleging only that Ahmed, a pharmacist named Michael Rudolph, and a doctor named Andrew Jarminiski (who are both charged along with Ahmed in the first indictment) "did unlawfully and without malice kill Andrew G. (a minor), a human being, in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner and without due caution and circumspection."
TPM's attempts to contact Rudolph and lawyers for Ahmed and Jarminiski were unsuccessful on Thursday. In a statement emailed to TPM on Friday, Landmark Medical Management human resources manager, Ladonna Hieber, said that Ahmed and his staff "are innocent of all charges that have been alleged. The charges are meritless and we expect full exoneration of any wrongdoing." Southern California Public Radio, which first reported on the indictment, reported late Thursday that the The Orange County prosecutor's office declined to comment to SCPR because the indictments remain under seal.
In an extensive profile in 2012, TPM first reported about Ahmed's business practices, which officials and workers compensation experts in California have had suspicions about for years. In his initial interview with TPM, in his Ontario, California office in August of that year, Ahmed agreed to meet only if his lawyer were present and the interview was off the record. In a subsequent on-the-record phone interview, Ahmed was wary of providing details about how his business worked.
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/kareem-ahmed-obama-donor-indicted#ixzz35CIQB28e
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