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| | Kareem Ahmed's Toxic Compound Pain Medication Was Distributed To Claimants Without Warning. Arraignment For 15 Defendants Continued To September 12th 2014.
By Lonce LaMon - August 26, 2014
The continuation of the arraignment took place last Friday morning, August 22, 2014, in Orange County for all 15 defendants involved in the compound medication scam and conspiracy led by Barack Obama’s one-million-dollar donor, Kareem Ahmed.
The Orange County District Attorney’s office revealed in a Press Release that same day that Landmark Medical Management, owned by Kareen Ahmed, and its subsidiaries defrauded over 100 million dollars from insurance carriers, third-party administrators, and self-insured and administered entities by mass producing, distributing, and prescribing an expensive and toxic compound cream medication. The compound cream was a pain medication.
It was at last explained how the Involuntary Manslaughter count in the Indictment came into being. In 2011, a woman employee injured her knee at work while she was pregnant. Andrew Jarminski, M.D. is alleged to have been this female claimant’s assigned workers’ compensation physician. In August of that same year, the claimant gave birth to a healthy male child.
The claimant’s identity has not, so far, been revealed. On February 2, 2012, Dr. Jarminski is accused of illegally instructing his physician’s assistant to prescribe the toxic compound cream to this woman claimant with a then five-month-old child. Kareem Ahmed is accused of working with the owner of a Costa Mesa pharmacy to create this cream which contained very expensive and unsafe amounts of tramadol, dextromethorphan, and amitriptyline. Dr. Jarminski is accused of instructing the claimant to apply the cream to the painful area on her knee three times a day and for failing to advise her of the dangers and risks of using the prescribed transdermal cream.
The night of the day the claimant received the cream, she applied it to her knee. When her baby began to cry, the claimant held and fed the child without washing
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A person acts with criminal negligence when he acts in a reckless way that creates a high risk of death, and a reasonable person would have known that acting in that way would create such a risk. |
her hands after she’d applied the cream. The next morning, the mother found her baby non-responsive and not breathing. The infant was pronounced dead at the hospital.
All of the physicians who are defendants in this case are accused of not warning patients that the creams are highly toxic and that, if accidently ingested, these transdermal creams could cause great bodily injury or death. Ingestion could occur simply by eating after application of the cream without first washing ones hands.
Kareem Ahmed, Michael Rudolph (a pharmacist), and Andrew Jarminski, M.D. (a physician) are the three defendants out of the 15 total defendants who are accused of causing the death of the claimant’s baby. Under the law, a defendant may be charged with involuntary manslaughter when he acts with criminal negligence, committing a crime or a lawful act in an unlawful manner, causing the death of another person. Criminal negligence involves more than ordinary carelessness, inattention, or mistake in judgment. A person acts with criminal negligence when he acts in a reckless way that creates a high risk of death, and a reasonable person would have known that acting in that way would create such a risk. Simply stated, a person acts with criminal negligence when the way he acts is so different from the way an ordinarily careful person would act in the same situation that his act amounts to disregard for human life or indifference to the consequences of that act. An act causes death if the death is the direct, natural, and probable consequence of the act and the death would not have happened without the act.
The Los Angeles Police Department began an investigation of this case of infant death and discovered the identities of the pharmacies that had been mass-producing and distributing the compound creams. The case was then referred to the Orange County District Attorney who jointly investigated this case with the California Department of Insurance.
In June of 2010, Curtis Hague, a pharmacist, is accused of opening Curt’s Compounding Pharmacy in Fountain Valley. He’s accused of operating a closed-door pharmacy with Ahmed as his only client.
Kareem Ahmed is accused of giving the formula for his compounded cream to Curtis Hague. Ahmed is accused of creating three compounded cream formulas with a Mike Shaw, the owner of a Costa Mesa pharmacy. Mike Shaw is not a defendant in this case, but he was a witness before the Grand Jury. Curtis Hague is accused of selling the creams to Ahmed at a cost of $35 to $72 per tube. Ahmed is accused of then billing the insurance companies between $1,200 and $1,900 for each cream prescribed to a patient.
Between June 2010 and December 2012, Curtis Hague is accused of compounding over 145,000 transdermal creams in 30 gram to 240 gram tubes and
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Between June 2010 and December 2013, Kareem Ahmed is accused of fraudulently billing insurance companies and receiving over $105 million for the compounded transdermal creams. |
selling them to Ahmed at a profit to Hague of over 8 million dollars.
Michael Rudolph is accused of being the pharmacist and owner of Healthcare Compounding Pharmacy in Tustin. In October of 2010, Kareem Ahmed is accused of entering into an agreement with Rudolph to mass-manufacture the compound creams because Curtis Hague could not keep up with Ahmed’s prescription demand. Between October 2010 and December 2012, Michael Rudolph is accused of manufacturing over 10,000 additional compounded transdermal creams.
Both Curtis Hague and Michael Rudolph are accused of illegally mass producing the compounded creams without a manufacturing license from the FDA, as required by law.
Between June 2010 and December 2013, Kareem Ahmed is accused of fraudulently billing insurance companies and receiving over $105 million for the compounded transdermal creams. No wonder he had a million dollars to spare for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012. There were only a couple of dozen individual one-million-dollar or higher donors to the President’s reelection campaign. Kareem Ahmed became a member of that club on the backs of California employers paying their inflated workers’ compensation premiums.
Evette Charbonnet and Bruce Curnick are accused of identifying workers’ compensation doctors and inducing them to prescribe Ahmed’s compound transdermal creams to workers’ compensation patients. Ahmed is accused of knowing that workers’ compensation doctors did not generally dispense or prescribe compounded drugs because it is not profitable for the doctors. He is accused of illegally paying kickbacks to physicians ranging from $65 to $165 per tube to prescribe the compounded transdermal creams to patients. Charbonnet and Curnick are accused of meeting regularly with participating physicians and the pharmacy owners to implement and oversee the fraudulent scheme.
During this time, Kareem Ahmed is accused of paying the following physicians and offices to dispense and prescribe the compounded transdermal creams to patients: Eduardo Anguizola, M.D. is accused of receiving over $2.3 million; Daniel Alexander Capen, M.D. is accused of receiving over $2.6 million; First Choice Healthcare Medical Group and Craig M. Chanin, M.D. are accused of receiving over $770,000; Andrew Jarminski, M.D. is accused of receiving over $1.9 million; Khan is accused of receiving over $1.1 million; Performance Medical Group and Arsalan Pourteymour, M.D. are accused of receiving over $680,000; Regional Associates Medical Group and Robert J. Villapania, D.C. are accused of receiving over $1 million; Randy Rosen, M.D. is accused of receiving over $600,000; and Dr. Michael Barri is accused of receiving over $1.1 million.
The aforementioned physicians are accused of prescribing a large quantity of the compounded creams to patients in order to receive payments from Kareem Ahmed. They are accused of not warning patients that the creams are highly toxic and that, if accidently ingested, could cause great bodily harm or death. Ingestion could occur simply by eating after application of the cream without first washing ones hands.
The arraignment is still on-going and has been continued until September 12, 2014. The judge hearing this case is The Honorable Thomas Goethals in court room C-45 in the Orange County Superior Courthouse on Civic Center Drive in Santa Ana.
This article was edited on October 5th 2014 to remove Tristar and Dr. Jeffrey Gross from being recipients of all or part of a 1.1 million dollars in kick-backs from Kareem Ahmed. Only Dr. Michael Barri was indicted for this particular alleged 1.1 million dollars in payment for prescribing the compound creams.
Lonce LaMon, journalist, lonce@adjustercom.com; copyright adjustercom and Lonce LaMon; all rights reserved
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