2 Doctors Indicted on Insurance Fraud Charges

A Rancho Palos Verdes doctor and his former partner have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that they defrauded insurance companies of more than $7 million by performing unneeded medical tests on patients.

Under the indictment handed down last week in Los Angeles, Dr. William O. Kupferschmidt, 48, was charged with 38 counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud insurance companies from 1986 to 1989.

His former partner, Dr. Ameer M. Dikshit, 55, of Laguna Niguel, was charged with one count of conspiracy. In December, he was charged with 42 counts of mail fraud, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Lee Michaelson.

Dikshit’s lawyer, Deputy Federal Public Defender Maria Valdez, said her client has pleaded not guilty to the mail fraud charges and will also plead not guilty to the conspiracy charge.

Valdez said Dikshit is looking forward to trial “so finally, he will be vindicated. The investigators have been after him for two years now and have made his life hell.”

Kupferschmidt pleaded not guilty Monday to the mail fraud charges leveled against him, Michaelson said. Kupferschmidt’s attorney could not be reached for comment.

The indictment charges that the doctors had telephone salespeople contact insured people to come to one of several clinics for a free or low-cost physical exam, Michaelson said. Kupferschmidt was co-owner of three clinics where Dikshit served as medical director, she said.

Once at the clinic, unnecessary tests were performed on patients, who signed a blank claim form, and those tests were billed to an insurance company, according to the indictment.

The indictment also charges that clinic employees were instructed to enter on the patients’ charts the diagnoses most likely to result in reimbursement from an insurance company.

The counts against Kupferschmidt carry a maximum penalty of 195 years in prison and $9.75 million in fines, and those against Dikshit carry a maximum of 215 years in prison and a $10.75-million fine.