What if it’s not drug companies or dodgy dealers trying to keep you hooked, but rehab? It sounds like a twist straight from a Philip K. Dick novel, but that’s what allegedly happened with a treatment center in Southern California.
Prosecutors accuse two local rehab kingpins, Nathan Young, 39, and his father David Young, 71, of running a devious scheme that involved luring recovering addicts with illegal drugs so they could keep milking insurance companies that were paying for their treatments. Many of these addicts were on the fringes of society, and often unhoused.
From 2020 to 2026, the father-son fraudsters submitted more than $1.6 billion in claims to health insurers, from which they reaped over $210 million, according to a criminal complaint reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Assistant attorney general Colin McDonald called it the “largest the largest sober home fraud scheme the [Justice] Department has ever prosecuted,” as quoted by the New York Post.
