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SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A Beverly Hills doctor who authorities say performed unnecessary surgeries on patients in one of the nation's largest medical insurance fraud schemes was sentenced Friday.
Dr. Mario Rosenberg pleaded no contest in 2014 to felony insurance fraud and was given three years of probation and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service and pay $2.9 million in restitution, the Orange County Register reported.
Rosenberg and others recruited healthy people to undergo surgeries in exchange for money or low-cost cosmetic procedures such as "tummy tucks," prosecutors said.
Health insurers were then billed for unnecessary and dangerous procedures, which included hysterectomies and colonoscopies, prosecutors alleged.
They said more than 2,800 people were recruited and Rosenberg and two other doctors performed more than 1,000 surgeries. The scam was centered at a now-closed surgical outpatient clinic in Buena Park.
The $154 million scheme ended in 2008 with 19 people being indicted. At the time, authorities called it the largest medical fraud scheme in the country.
Rosenberg was one of the last defendants to plead or be convicted.
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