A fledgling COVID-testing company that was hired by Orange County for $5 million is now accused in a lawsuit of scheming to illegally solicit kickbacks from doctors and defraud federal health programs.
The whistleblower suit alleges that 360 Health Plan, the company hired in 2020 by the county to conduct drive-through COVID testing at so-called super sites, double-billed government agencies for the tests and plotted to get kickbacks from physicians for referrals. The company did business as 360 Clinic.
The Superior Court suit by former employee Laura Garcia also accuses 360 Clinic officials of conspiring to send patients to medical services either owned by the firm or by relatives of company officials, a violation of federal and state regulations against physician self-referrals.
Eliot Krieger, the attorney for 360 Clinic, denied the firm was involved in any wrongdoing and described Garcia as an “at-will employee for approximately one month.”
“The conclusory statements and allegations (in the lawsuit) are unsubstantiated and lack evidentiary foundation,” Krieger said in a written statement. “We stand by the integrity of our operations and remain committed to cooperating fully with relevant authorities.”
Garcia’s attorney, Brandon Gonzalez, responded: “While I appreciate the defense’s attempt to minimize my client’s role with 360 Clinic, they simply cannot escape the fundamental truth of what she saw and was asked to do by 360’s executives, which, as alleged, were brazen violations of both federal and state laws relating to billing practices and kickbacks.”
Link to Andrew Do
The clinic is among COVID contractors undergoing audits by the county in the aftermath of federal charges against former county Supervisor Andrew Do, who pleaded guilty to accepting more than $550,000 in bribes to funnel $10 million in COVID money to a nonprofit group. The money was supposed to be used to feed shuttered seniors and build a Vietnam War memorial, but only an estimated $1.4 million was actually spent on meals and the memorial was not completed. According to Do’s plea agreement some of the money also went to his two adult daughters.
Do appears to be linked to 360 Clinic as well. Gonzalez said Garcia was recruited to work at 360 Clinic by the wife of Do’s former chief of staff, Chris Wangsaporn.
County Supervisor Katrina Foley said 360 Clinic has long been on her radar.
“Over the last two years I’ve received numerous complaints about 360 Clinic. I’ve forwarded them to county counsel and the investigation team,” Foley said. “If there were fraudulent dealings, we will be taking action.”
Formed at height of pandemic
The COVID testing company was formed in 2020 at the height of the pandemic by Vince Tien, who ran a family-owned home nursing and hospice business, and his brother, Gary Nguyen, along with David Ngo, according to the suit. The lawsuit alleges they partnered with Dr. Linh Nguyen, who had been doing COVID-19 testing in Arizona.
According to federal court records, Nguyen pleaded guilty in March 2024 to health care fraud related to his practice in Arizona and was sentenced to 24 months in prison. He cheated health care benefit programs, such as Medicare and Blue Shield, of $3.7 million from 2016 to 2021, according to his plea agreement.
Nguyen and other physicians in the Arizona operation submitted thousands of false billings asserting they had provided medical services when it was actually others who did the work but were entitled to less or no reimbursement from the medical benefit programs, the federal agreement said.
Before his indictment, Nguyen helped Tien, Nguyen and Ngo found 360 Clinic, according to the lawsuit. Krieger noted Nguyen was no longer involved in 360 Clinic after his indictment.
In a 2021 podcast for Dementia Matters, Tien described the genesis of 360 Clinic, how it “was really born out of the pandemic … where we had to figure out a way to keep our nurses employed.”
Served 12,000 clients a day
In published reports, Tien said 360 Clinic started a drive-thru testing operation out of a Garden Grove church in 2020. Within months, the firm submitted a proposal to the county and, two weeks later, was offering free tests at the Anaheim Convention Center, with a second super site to come at the Orange County Fairgrounds, according to published reports. The operation was funded with federal pandemic money.
Another 15 walk-up testing sites were opened by 360 Clinic throughout Orange County, while the firm expanded to serve U.S. Navy personnel in San Diego and Bremerton, Washington. By May 2021, 360 Clinic had conducted more than 361,000 COVID tests, serving 12,000 clients a day at its 50 drive-through, walk-up and mobile sites, mostly in Southern California, according to the company.
It wasn’t long before Tien caught the eye of Orange County’s movers and shakers. Tien, who immigrated from Vietnam to the United States with his family at age 5, was appointed to the board of the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Orange County as well as to the elite Forbes Business Council networking group. He also was a nominee in 2021 for the Orange County Business Journal’s excellence in entrepreneurship list.
A press release on Business Wire credited 360 Clinic’s “early and effective action” with slowing the spread of COVID and helping multiple communities safely reopen.
Dark side to operation
But Garcia’s lawsuit, filed in May 2024, suggests a darker side to the operation.
Garcia was hired in April 2021 as the company’s senior director of revenue cycle management, essentially its billing services director, at the clinic’s Anaheim Convention Center office. Garcia had worked the previous three years as the national billing services director at the global AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Gonzalez said.
Within a few days of arriving at 360 Clinic, her bosses asked her to research anti-kickback laws and self-referral regulations, especially the Stark Law, which prohibits doctors from referring patients — for federally funded services — to entities where they have a financial interest, according to the suit.
The lawsuit said executives were particularly interested in what the rules allowed in medical self-referrals since the officers held managing shares in their home health company and an adult day care facility.
Garcia was told 360 Clinic intended to funnel patients from the testing sites to other physicians for the purposes of profiting from those referrals, the suit said. The clinic also wanted to refer patients to other doctors for more specialized tests that could be billed at a higher rate than its standard tests, according to the suit.
Paying the bill would be the federal government, Medicare and private insurance.
Although Garcia advised her bosses their plans would be illegal, they repeatedly pressed her to set up partnerships with the physicians, the suit alleged. She was laid off nearly a month later and told that the executives who hired her didn’t have the authority to do so.
Garcia alleged in the lawsuit she was really fired to keep her from reporting that 360 Clinic also was:
Falsely reporting to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration that patients had been asked if they had private insurance or the means to pay for the tests. Intentionally reporting that initial COVID tests results were either “misplaced” or “false,” bringing the patients back for retests that were not needed and could be billed again. Staffing the test sites with family members or people who had a business relationship with the executives in order to promote the schemes.Followed all regulations
Krieger, 360 Clinic’s lawyer, countered that the firm followed all state and federal regulations and partnered with an independent billing service to manage claims.
County records obtained by the Orange County Register show that while the testing contract allotted up to $5 million in advance payments, 360 Clinic returned nearly half of the money for claims that were covered by insurance plans.
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Gonzalez said his investigation is continuing.
“Recent revelations concerning the county’s discretionary use of federal COVID funding has raised issues that every resident of our county should be concerned about,” he said. “It’s anticipated that my client’s lawsuit will further lend to that discussion in the coming weeks as our own investigation of 360 Clinic continues to rapidly develop.”
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