A grand jury has indicted an Anchorage doctor and her husband in a case that allegedly involved deceiving patients about the medications being injected into their bodies.
That’s according to an indictment handed up in federal court July 17 against rheumatologist Claribel Tan and her husband Daniel Tan, who did administrative work at his wife’s clinic, charging them with healthcare fraud and tax evasion.
Federal prosecutors with the Alaska U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement Monday that the couple tricked patients about the necessity of certain medications, filed false insurance claims for medication and medical services and included false information in tax filings in 2014, 2015 and 2017.
Neither the indictment nor prosecutors said what substances or medication was deceptively injected. The court filing says patients had not consented to taking certain medications Tan gave them.
According to the indictment, Tan filed claims to health care benefit programs that inflated the number of injections she gave patients and the amount of time she spent with them.
The prosecutors allege the Tans illegally obtained more than $10 million. Through separate civil action, the U.S. Justice Department has seized about $8.5 million from the Tans, according to the statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Court records show the Tans were both arrested Monday.
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Caseyhere.
