CALIFORNIA—On June 23, the United States Attorney for the Central District of California announced charges against more than 10 people for either engaging in fraud against government- funded health programs or abusing their positions to illegally prescribe controlled substances.
The defendants are Christina Mareik, aka Christina Marie Sanchez Hernandez, 61, of Whittier; Oren David Shachar, 59, of Van Nuys; Abraham Shin, 66, of Corona; Jeannie Choi, 57, of Torrance; Brenda Lee Lopez, 63, of Norwalk; Lynn Galbraith, 59, of Anaheim; Eugene Richard Dorsey, 83, of Orange; Wisam Khader, 36, of Irvine; Patrick Murphy, 40, of Irvine; and Justin Evans, 37, of Lakewood, Colorado.
Charges have been brought in six separate cases. The first is United States v. Mareik, in which Mareik is charged with submitting fraudulent claims to Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicare, from May 2022 to April 2023, for 19 drugs for patients that were either not provided to the patients or were not medically necessary.
This resulted in Medi-Cal paying over $178 million for drugs and $270 million in fraud. While she was doing so, she worked for Paul Richard Randall, who handled direct marketing for Monte Vista Pharmacy, and the two of them worked with Kyrollos Mekail, who owned Monte Vista Pharmacy, and with Patricia Anderson. Mareik created the false information and forwarded thousands of the fake prescriptions to Anderson who signed them and then arranged for the prescriptions to be sent to Monte Vista, which made submitted claims to Medi-Cal. Mareik also submitted false prescriptions using her own name.
Randall and associates spread the money around to a third party and paid Anderson kickbacks. The drugs were either not given to the patients or were not medically needed. The patients complained about receiving the drugs. Mareik oversaw the receipt, which prevented her and her associates’ actions from being discovered until the California Department of Health Care Services conducted an audit of Monte Vista Pharmacy.
Medical providers that require prior authorization to provide services were waived as Medi-Cal switched to a new payment system for its prescription drug program.
Randall pleaded guilty on April 7. He admitted to submitting at least $269,120,829 in false and fraudulent claims to Medi-Cal, which in turn paid at least $178,746,556. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in a federal prison, and a sentencing hearing has been scheduled for August 3. He also used the funds from his action to buy homes and luxury items, such as rare baseball cards. Forfeiture proceedings are underway, but the houses and items have not yet been seized by the court.
Mareik has not yet been sentenced and could receive up to 10 years in federal prison. She was released from jail after paying a $100,000 bond, and her arraignment is scheduled for July 23.
Anderson has been charged with two counts of health care fraud, and in August 2024, Mekail pleaded guilty to two counts of the same offense.
The second case involves Oren David Shachar and Abraham Shin, who were arrested on June 18. Jeannie Choi was arraigned on June 22 and is charged with defrauding Medicare of about $27 million. They face 16 counts, including aggravated identity theft, violating the Anti-Kickback Statute, health care fraud, conspiracy to commit health care fraud, and monetary transactions in criminally derived property exceeding $10,000.
It is alleged that between February 2021 and March 2026, Shachar submitted false claims for hospice care for patients who were deceased or for whom care was not necessary. He procured hospice beneficiaries by paying marketing personnel kickbacks to send clients to him, and that he paid beneficiaries to remain enrolled in hospices he owned, including Holly Trinity Hospice in Glendale and Art of Hospice, Inc., in Encino. In 2025, he worked with Shin and Choi, both of whom work in marketing, who assisted Shachar by selling him the personal information of living and deceased people.
If found guilty, the defendants could spend several decades in prison. Shachar and Shin are free pending trial, which is set to start on August 11.
Brenda Lee Lopez, the manager of a medical office, is charged with seven counts of health care fraud and six counts of aggravated identity theft and is accused of defrauding Medicare through a $9 million laboratory testing scheme. It is alleged that she submitted bills to Medicare for lab procedures by forging the signatures of four medical providers, some of whom were deceased or did not use the tests. The laboratory was paid about $2,117,994 after Medicare billed about $9,087,013. She, along with her family, was paid about $335,000, which she either used to pay her associates or to gamble.
Lopez was arrested on June 23 and arraigned the same day. If convicted, she could receive, for each count of identity theft, a mandatory two-year sentence in federal prison, and for each count of health care fraud, a maximum of 10 years in federal prison.
Lynn Galbraith, who owns Azure Hospice Care Inc. in Garden Grove, is charged with one count of health care fraud. It is alleged that between April 2021 and February 2024, she submitted approximately $2,266,694 in fraudulent hospice service claims to Medicare. If convicted, she would face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. Her initial hearing will take place in the near future at the United States District Court in Santa Ana.
The second-to-last case, United States v. Khader et al., charges Wisam Khader, Patrick Murphy, and Justin Evans with one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute controlled substances. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, they wrote 90 prescriptions for each other to obtain federally controlled substances such as morphine, oxycodone, and buprenorphine for their own use. If convicted, they could face 40 years in federal prison.
Dr. Eugene Richard Dorsey, a psychiatrist at Western Orthopedic Surgical Associates, is charged with defrauding the United States Department of Labor from December 2020 to December 2025 through filing false reports to be reimbursed for medical services, and through completing false reports to make it possible for people to be eligible for federal workers’ compensation programs.
He is also accused of submitting false reimbursement claims for medical services, resulting in approximately $1,831,462 in overpayments. He will appear in the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana in coming weeks. If found guilty, he could receive a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
These charges were brought by the National Fraud Enforcement Division of the Department of Justice, which was created on April 7, as part of a nationwide law enforcement effort to punish those who commit fraud. Charges have been brought against 455 defendants, including 90 doctors and other medical professionals alleged to have participated in health care fraud that resulted in more than $6.5 billion in fraudulent claims.
