Doctor Decries UC Irvine ‘Witch Hunt’

From his Mexico City home, Dr. Ricardo H. Asch on Friday called the 35-count federal indictment against him “a witch hunt” by UC Irvine and federal officials and said the charges amounted to little more than “medical billing irregularities.”

Relaying his comments through his attorney, Asch, former director of the UC Irvine fertility clinic closed amid an international egg-stealing scandal, maintained his innocence and said he will not return to the United States to face the charges unless he is treated “fairly.”

Lloyd Charton, Asch’s attorney, said the doctor believes he can get a fair trial here but does not believe he should be incarcerated while awaiting trial.

“This is a lot worse than a witch hunt,” Charton said during a news conference a day after the indictment was filed in Los Angeles. “This is a malicious attempt by the university to deflect attention from themselves to the three doctors at the Center for Reproductive Health.”

The attorney said that Asch’s involvement in medical billings was minimal and that under the university’s management arrangement, the clinic was staffed by employees trained not by Asch but by the university.

The lengthy mail-fraud indictment by a federal grand jury was the first against Asch, the scandal’s main figure, who has been accused by the university and former patients of stealing eggs and embryos from scores of women and implanting them in other patients.

However, the current charges against Asch, as with previous indictments against his two former partners, Drs. Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio C. Stone, do not touch on the issue of egg stealing.

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The indictment accuses Asch and his partners of stealing from insurance companies from 1991 to 1993 by falsely claiming they were assisted by other licensed physicians when performing fertility procedures. In fact, they were not assisted by anyone or were aided by nonlicensed physicians, such as medical residents or foreigners, whose services could not legitimately be billed, according to the indictment.

John Quinn, an attorney for the UC Board of Regents, said most of the billings that came under scrutiny were for professional duties, such as examinations and consultations performed at the clinic, not surgical procedures.

Charton said these billing irregularities involved “one-third of 1%” of all procedures performed at the center.

“If anyone is suggesting that Dr. Asch, Balmaceda or Stone,” Charton said, “or any other physician or surgeon engaged in research or professorial duties should be required to know to one-third of 1% how accurate their billing techniques are, I would suggest to you that’s asking too much.”

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Dr. Asch was not aware that any fees were paid to physicians at the clinic that were not legitimate, Charton said.

Quinn, the UC regents’ attorney, also emphatically denied Charton’s claim that UC Irvine officials had targeted Asch as a “scapegoat” for the university.

“To suggest that the U.S. attorney is doing the bidding of the university is absurd,” Quinn said.

UC Irvine officials originally accused Asch of egg stealing and also research misconduct, illegal importation of fertility drugs and insurance fraud. Authorities also were investigating possible tax evasion. Asch, his partners and the University of California have been sued by more than 80 former patients alleging everything from egg theft to fraud.

Experts say extraditing Asch from Mexico may be difficult because the charges do not involve a major felony such as murder. The same is true for Balmaceda, who was indicted in June but left to practice in his native Chile. Only Stone remains in the United States.