The Binge Cases: Scary Terri - Doctor’s Orders | 4. Wheel of Fortune

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

With our main suspect on the lam, we fan out across the globe to dig into the past, present and potential future of the man prosecutors call, the “Mastermind of Fraud.” Doctor’s Orders is pro...duced by Western Sound for Sony Music Entertainment’s The Binge.  Binge all episodes of Doctor’s Orders, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge.  Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access.  The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:42 Or visit getthebenge.com to get access to wherever you listen. The Binge. Feed your true crime obsession. The Binge. Where is Muneer? Where is Muneer? But the biggest question in the case, where is Dr. Ueda? For over 15 years, authorities in California have wanted to talk to him, whether as a person of interest in the murder of Juliana Redding,
Starting point is 00:01:18 or as a named defendant in a mega health insurance scam. Okay, we didn't really know where Ua was. So we went about trying to find Uaida. It's a decades-old occupation. This is Mark Minnick. And as we tried to find Yuwaita through different sources, investigative sources, we popped up all kinds of stuff. In 1999, Mark was the CEO of Van Wert County Hospital in a really small town in Ohio. Probably about hour and 15 minutes south of Toledo.
Starting point is 00:01:51 And for a while, in the early 2000s, unit team were trying to track down Munir Ueda. You know, we popped up. up articles from magazines from Eastern Europe where he's judging beauty contests. You know, we see pictures of him and other beauty pageant people who eventually ended up in Van Wert, Ohio, amazingly enough. We found out the supposed Harvard rumor, found out more about the Stanford Fellowship, we found out more of other hospitals he had dealt with. In there, I had the California Bureau of Investigation calling me, along with other people. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing.
Starting point is 00:02:33 It's just absolutely amazing. The guy has left this kind of trail over, you know, 25 years. The path Dr. Murnir Yuwaita took, from growing up in Lebanon to a small town in Ohio, to global capitals around the world, is the same path. He took from small town surgeon to accused criminal mastermind. We figured, you know, it was mostly about the money. But then some of the things revealed a possibly greater diabolical person than we had imagined. I'm Benadere from Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound.
Starting point is 00:03:10 You're listening to Doctor's Orders. This is episode four, Wheel of Fortune. Everyone, whether you're a superhero or a supervillain, or anything in between, everyone has an origin story. Now, Munir's father, the family is originally from Tripoli. Now, this is kind of a known, more impoverished area in the country. Munir Yuwaita's origin story starts with a father who was, by most everyone's account, a superhero. Marwana Weida, who is a Munira Wada's father, trained in. in internal medicine at the American University of Root.
Starting point is 00:03:55 This is Maya Namsid. She's part of an investigative reporting duo based in Beirut, Lebanon. And she told me that Marwan Yueida is kind of a big deal. After training in the United States, he returned to Lebanon in 1966 and was a pioneer in Lebanon's healthcare system. That was the year that Munira Weta was born.
Starting point is 00:04:16 And that is when he introduced the specialty of infectious diseases, the practices, the practices, of infection control and antibiotic utilization. So you have this man who is very, very talented and clearly kind of a pioneer in his field, right? This very, very impressive man, it's kind of very interesting to see how far the apple fell from the tree.
Starting point is 00:04:40 We don't know too much about teenage Munir, but we know that he and at least one of his sisters followed in their dad's footsteps, attending the American University of Beirut. Munir graduated from AUB's medical school in 1991. One of his sisters is still at AUB. She's a professor there. Her specialty is in anti-corruption and ethical business practices for accountants worldwide.
Starting point is 00:05:08 From 1991 to 1999, Munir's resume shows several things. A medical internship at NYU Medical Center in New York, Harvard and Albert Einstein Medical College for orthopedic. training, a fellowship at Stanford for spinal surgery, and maybe it was in New York, that Munir met a woman named Aja Erbsaloo. She's the oldest romantic relationship that we could find for Munir. Eha was the runner-up for Miss Estonia in 1988, and she was also in New York in the 1990s. After all that, a job in Van Wert, Ohio. We were looking for an orthopedic surgeon, probably 1998.
Starting point is 00:05:51 99, and we had put out a recruitment contract, and he was one of our candidates who did a visit to Van Wirt. This is Mark Minnick, again, former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital in Van Wirt, Ohio. I just really like saying Van Wirt. Well, I would say we're a typical Midwestern community. Van Wart County is probably a population base of about 31,000. Van Wirt City itself is about 11,000. You know, the county fair is one of the best.
Starting point is 00:06:21 big events of the year. All the things you kind of see about the Midwest and the movies kind of epitomizes band work. Munir seems into it. He takes the job. Moves into a house right across the street from Mark with a couple show dogs, his former beauty queen, now fiancé, along with an avid interest in horses, like really fancy horses. I mean, he had dogs, he had horses, he had models. And people always ask me, hey, did you think of anything? No, I know doctors who date models. I knew doctors who have show dogs, and I knew no doctors who have horses. Now, I'm not sure I know a doctor who has all three, but not unusual hobbies for doctors. The year Ehha and Munir moved to Ohio, they also started a modeling agency called E&M Model Management.
Starting point is 00:07:09 According to media reports, the agency was offering foreign models, potential work in America. So I think we had like 18 kids in our neighborhood. I think 17 of them were boys, and they were all under 14 years of age. So when they saw the models out jogging or whatever, I mean, they could draw attention. And then there was another one, and I think I've seen her on the internet as maybe another Missistonia or another Missistonia contestant. But they were there for a while, too. And their appearance eventually led to Ahaz's disappearance, so to speak. Soon, Aja, the now former fiancé, had left.
Starting point is 00:07:54 And Miss Estonia, 1998, Cadre Valhuts, had arrived. She was also Miss Baltic Sea, 1999. So the way doctors and hospitals operate does not make sense to me. I had Mark explain it. Van Wert County Hospital needed more orthopedic surgeons. So they recruited Munir. And we're thinking, well, Harvard's the gold standard. We're thinking Stanford's the gold standard.
Starting point is 00:08:21 But hospitals rarely like hire doctors, like on a W-2. When Munir arrived in Van Wert, Mark's hospital helped him set up a little company. Then the doctors at the hospital started referring their patients who needed an orthopedist to his new practice. And since it can take a minute for a new practice to get established, the hospital guaranteed Munir's new company and income. With the expectation that once it was all up and running, Munir would pay that money back. It was like an advance.
Starting point is 00:08:51 And then we watch and see when that revenue is sufficient enough to support the practice. And so we basically asked for financials on a monthly basis. And we found basically that he was doing much better than our guarantee. Mark says he'd build almost $2 million in under six months. And I would be the first one to say he built it up very quickly. But build does not mean collected. So this is where things get a little confusing, but it's important. So I'm going to explain.
Starting point is 00:09:27 As you know, if you've been to a doctor, when you get a bill, there's so many different things on it. And the rates can be, well, crazy. Sometimes they're all, did that really happen? And it costs how much? The thing is, doctors never expect to get all that money. They know they're usually just paid a fraction of them. Like, one insurance company might pay, say, 45% of what's billed. Medicare might pay, like, 80%.
Starting point is 00:09:54 So what doctors bill and what they get can be really, really different. And it causes this very real temptation to over bill. Because they're the ones who order all the tests. They're the ones that order all the admissions. They do all those things. If physicians weren't honest, they could run. write their own paycheck. So hospitals like Van Wert County Hospital have a layer of oversight called peer review
Starting point is 00:10:24 to make sure doctors aren't ordering unnecessary things. In other words, is what he's doing appropriate? Insurance companies do their own reviews too. And this is maybe where some of that whole insurance companies deciding what's appropriate care and what's not appropriate care. This is where some of that comes from. Just some. Doctors pushing the envelope and overbilling.
Starting point is 00:10:47 So here's Munir Uweda, moving to Van Wirt, Ohio, with his beauty queen, and suddenly billing a lot of money. And the hospital wanted to see what's going on here? So at that point in time, we wanted to reconcile with him. And he basically stonewalled us on that. Basically, what he did is he filed suit against us. And not only the hospital, but me specifically. So, you know, we were trying to work with him. and all of a sudden we get slapped with a lawsuit.
Starting point is 00:11:19 So as this stuff is going along, we're starting to figure out that we're dealing with a fairly sophisticated person. Not sophisticated in a good way, but probably sophisticated in ways that we typically don't deal with. It took 18 months to litigate. I think he went through five different attorneys in the process. He kind of used attorneys as a fungible good. In the end, Mark and the band, Anwork County Hospital prevailed. The judge ordered Munir to repay over $400,000.
Starting point is 00:11:54 But remember what gets billed versus what gets collected? So we had put the money in escrow, and the only people that could get access to the escrow were the attorneys. We went to the escrow, the money was gone. Dr. Uwaita had forged his attorney's name and taken the money and esconded with it. Judge Carr had some kind words for Dr. Yuwaita's attorney who Dr. Yuwaita hoodwinked along with everybody else. So we had the judgment, but we didn't have the money.
Starting point is 00:12:26 Meanwhile, Munir had already, like, disappeared, like months ago. It kind of vanished in the dead of night. When faced with that peer review for his almost $2 million in charges, Munir resigned his hospital privileges, which effectively squashed any inquiry. Yeah, that squashes that. Because I don't, you know, my peer review is about me. I'm reviewing what's going on in my institution. And if he's out of there, then I don't have the right to review him anymore.
Starting point is 00:12:57 Mark still doesn't know how much money Moonier made while working in Van Wert. I guess our impression of you, Wade, it was, okay, he was not a great partner. He was not a great person to be associated with. But then some of the things post-wise, I mean, I think one of the things that the California Bureau of Investigation asked me that really kind of said, holy crap, you know, maybe I'm, maybe we avoided a really bad situation when they asked me if I ever feared for my life, you know, it's like, okay, why would I fear for my life? Should I have been worried? You know, my family lived there, all those types of things, but I don't know that he had to advance that far. I don't know that he was into it to the hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, and then the whole Juliana Redding thing. You know, maybe he just got deeper and deeper. But we just thought he was, you know, a basic crook. Mark and his lawyers did eventually track Munir to California,
Starting point is 00:13:57 and they did get their money. They may be the only ones to have gotten any money back from Dr. Munir Uweda. As the weather cools, I'm all about finding pieces that actually get the job done. Warm, comfortable, and easy to wear a repeat. and quince always delivers. Right now I've been eyeing their lightweight, cotton cashmere, ribbed, long-sleeve sweater. It's sleek and a little bit fitted, more polished than a basic long-sleeve tea, but lighter and less bulky than, you know, a chunky knit.
Starting point is 00:14:29 It's kind of that staple that looks, you know, good with jeans and sneakers, but you can also jazz it up, put it under a blazer where, you know, tucked into a skirt, has a little bit of cashmere in there for softness, which is very luxurious. We love that. I keep going back and forth between two colors, the olive and the mocha heather, two perfect fall shades. And here's the kicker. It's under $40. So I don't know. I think I don't even have to choose. I should just get both. That's what I love about quince. Elevated essentials made with premium fabrics, but at half the price of similar brands. They cut out the middlemen, partner directly with ethical factories, and make pieces that actually last. Layer up this fall
Starting point is 00:15:12 with pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to quince.com slash cases for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash cases. As the weather cools, I'm all about finding pieces that actually get the job done. Warm, comfortable, and easy to wear and repeat. And Quince always delivers. Right now I've been eyeing their lightweight, cotton cashmere, ribbed, long,
Starting point is 00:15:42 sweater. It's sleek and a little bit fitted, more polished than a basic long sleeve tea, but lighter and less bulky than, you know, a chunky knit. It's kind of that staple that looks, you know, good with jeans and sneakers, but you can also jazz it up, put it under a blazer where, you know, tucked into a skirt, has a little bit of cashmere in there for softness, which is very luxurious. We love that. I keep going back and forth between two colors, the olive and the mocha heather two perfect fall shades and here's the kicker it's under $40 so I don't know I think I don't even have to choose I should just get both that's what I love about quince elevated essentials made with premium fabrics but at half the price of similar brands
Starting point is 00:16:26 they cut out the middlemen partner directly with ethical factories and make pieces that actually last layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look go to quince.com slash cases for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash cases. Before the murder of Juliana Redding, before the alleged empire of corruption, Munir Uwaita first made headlines in the gossip pages in Estonia. My name is Olga Romana. I'm an investigative reporter from Estonia.
Starting point is 00:17:06 And the first article that I found mentioning Munir was published in October 1999. So this is right at the same time things are going sideways in Venworts. Definitely they were local celebrities. Where is Estonia? Just south of Finland. Bordered by Russia in the east, Latvia in the south, and across the Baltic Sea from Stockholm, Sweden. It's a small country.
Starting point is 00:17:34 The entire country is 1.3, 1.4 from. four million people, so it's super tiny. Tallinn, the capital, was an old medieval town. Today it's close to a half million people. It's a very lovely place where to be. And today it's known a lot for its really vibrant startup community. So you got the boyfriend of two misses, Missistonia 1988 runner-up, now being seen around town with Miss Estonia in 1998.
Starting point is 00:18:03 People are going to start talking. You know that with any love triangle involving two misses, it will create quite a bit of attention and people will be talking about it. So media did write about it quite a lot at that time. The headline from November 15, 1999 reads, very direct, Kadja Valhatt's with Eja Erbzalus' partner. Then, not two months later, on January 4, 2000, did Khadja Balhats secretly get married abroad? The article says From one Mrs. Cuddle to another
Starting point is 00:18:38 In recent months Cadre Val Hatz, who won the Miss Estonia title two years ago, has been in front of the lenses of photographers in the social media. And not alone. She is still in the photo series with a dark-blooded man.
Starting point is 00:18:54 The mysterious companion is former Miss Eja Erbsalou's Lebanese partner, Munir. And I'm just going to say this. Certain outlets in the Estonian press do not seem to give AF about certain journalistic standards. They call Munir at different times a, quote, womanizer, an exotic charmer, an evil genius, and pretty much just assume all the charges against him are true.
Starting point is 00:19:20 Different country, different rules, I guess. It took just two months. In the first reports, they were denying any romantic connections, and then later it was confirmed that, yeah, they actually did get married really fast. I traded an email with Eha, but she didn't want to comment for the story. We also emailed Cadre, but never heard back. After the drama of the Love Triangle settled down, Munir and Cadre got down to business. I think it was in 2000, that they started buying up real estate in Estonia.
Starting point is 00:19:52 Holger's research shows they bought an apartment in the luxurious and exclusive, Old Town Tallinn. A nearly 2,000 square foot apartment that would cost in the neighborhood, of, say, three quarters a million bucks today. Then they bought an historic country manner. Think like Bridgerton, big house with a collection of building, sprawling grounds, like an historic estate. They bought it for 10 million Estonian crowns. That would be about 1.5 million in today's dollars. According to media reports, their goal was to turn it into a horse farm.
Starting point is 00:20:26 Yeah, it looks like it was never properly developed into a horse farm. What I can find from one media report from 2004 is that allegedly they brought, was it, 10 or 12 Brazilian Mastiff dogs as well, they intended to bring a chimpanzee. They need special permission to bring a chimpanzee from Lebanon to their farm. The Estonian press also reported that around that same time, Munir was leaving Estonia quite often, leaving Cadre at home. An article in the paper's Stars section is headlined. Munir and Kadri believed that the separation is temporary. Kadri is quoted, The family is in Estonia, and being with the family makes Munir happier than anything else.
Starting point is 00:21:16 So Kadri used that opportunity to express that she didn't really understand what that fuss was about, that they are clearly in love, we were looking into each other's eyes, even when Munir is in the United States doing his MBA, that we are called. calling each other two times a day, but they are clearly, clearly in love. Sounds very much like what you'd see in like a Hollywood celebrity is trying to quash rumors about whatever, you know? Yeah, I wouldn't know much about it. Just going to say, Holger is a very accomplished investigative journalist, usually focused on Russia, financial crimes, stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:21:54 I did get the feeling that this celebrity gossip stuff was kind of beneath him. During this period, Munir also pursued an MBA program at the very prestigious Morton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Then he started establishing a new medical practice, this time in California. Holger dug into what was going on at the Country Manor in the early to mid-2000s. What he found was that it seemed like, at least at first, Munir and Cadre had big plans for rehabbing the estate, turning it into a state-of-the-art equestrian center. Think million-dollar horses, a genetic breeding program, very high-tech, very expensive,
Starting point is 00:22:36 and potentially very, very lucrative. But then, something changed. So I've just arrived at Ferden and der Aller. Ferdin and da Alle is basically Ferdin on the river Aller. And as soon as you arrive in Fearden and Aalem, and you look at the train station where I am now, it says Reiterstadt, which literally means rider's city or equestrian city. This is Rob Hyde. He's a freelance investigative reporter who's lived in Germany for over 20 years. Sometime around 2002, so a year or more after that last article about family making Munir happiest,
Starting point is 00:23:21 Munir was spending time in the German countryside. in a small town called Ferdin. Bairden is smack dab in the middle of Germany's ancestral centre for horse breeding and equestrian sports. It's incredibly scenic. You're riding through farms and you're seeing the windmills,
Starting point is 00:23:39 all the fields, and then the horses, and it kind of gets you in the mood of it. According to German media reports, Mnir's relationship with Ferdin was deeper than a simple love for horses. There is, you may have guessed it, a woman involved. Her name is Julia Koffler.
Starting point is 00:23:56 She was 19 at the time. He was 35. And she was a real horse lover, but she was actually a waitress. She was about to graduate from high school in 2002. And then suddenly this American businessman, you know, comes over and it puts a lot of effort, she said, into charming her. So she said, quoting, he kept coming to town. He took me out. He was very charming.
Starting point is 00:24:23 and I liked him a lot and she was completely unaware that he had already married. Rob's quoting from an interview with Julia published in 2016 in the German newspaper Kreitsaitong. The article says that Julia identified a property near Ferdin
Starting point is 00:24:40 similar to the Estonian estate. Julia says, quote, he wanted to buy something. I found it with my contacts in Feridon. This is it. I knew immediately. I talked him into it. It was our project.
Starting point is 00:24:52 We both indeed. enjoyed it. They named the horse farm Gistut Eichenhain, or Oak Grove Stud Farm. Then, Julia moved to California to be with Munir. In June 2006, they had twins. But by late 2006, according to court records, they already were in a child custody battle that would last several years. We reached out to Julia for this podcast, but she didn't want to comment. I just want to stop and point out that everything we've been talking about so far in this episode, none of it is illegal. Munir was buying real estate. He was having romances and children. He was having contract disputes. He was living in Estonia, spending time in Germany, getting a fancy business degree, and starting from 2002, practicing medicine and starting to build a medical empire in Southern California.
Starting point is 00:25:53 All this is leading up to the summer when he met Juliana Redding. Nothing here is illegal, but it is expensive, which leads to two very interesting and very pertinent questions. How could Munir afford all this? Where was the money coming from? Want more true crime? Subscribe to the binge to get all episodes of Where is Daniel Morkham? Add free today. And get instant access to over 50 other jaw-dropping true crime stories.
Starting point is 00:26:32 Plus, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month. Search for the binge channel on Apple Podcasts or head to getthebinge.com to subscribe today. The binge. Feed your true crime obsession. Check out the big stars, big series, and blockbuster movies.
Starting point is 00:26:54 Streaming on Paramount Plus. Cue the music. Like NCIS, Tony, and Ziva. We'd like to make up her own rules. Tulsa King. We want to take out the competition. The substance. This balance is not working.
Starting point is 00:27:09 And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. The one thing I could say was absolute certainty. California is the training center for all health care fraud and abuse. I want to introduce you to a guy named Bill Reynolds. Bill's been investigating medical fraud for 33 years. He's been studying Munir Ueda for over a decade now.
Starting point is 00:27:43 My primary responsibility is California Warwick-Com. The fraud and abuse is just rampant. I had no idea. He has stories for days about the depth, dangers, and outrageous characters in the workers' comp fraud world. There was one doctor who he traveled from facility to facility, and he'd bring three physician's assistance with him. And each person, the doctor and the three PAs would see 80 to 100 people in a day. It was just a mill operation. It was a traveling dock in the box.
Starting point is 00:28:20 they would hand the patients, anywhere from 320 to 400 patients, five pharmaceuticals. And so they were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. And this is just one individual in there. It might sound super dry. Yes, a lot of money. But at the end of the day, it's, you know, insurance fraud, ripping off insurance companies. I mean, who likes those guys? But Bill's all, no man.
Starting point is 00:28:51 This is actually life and death. Like I had one individual who came to me, I think I reviewed 500 surgeries. I think it was 12% of the people died within six months of having the surgery. They would target Hispanics. Hey, let's recruit these patients from Mexico. So they'd offer them a pathway to citizenship. Come here, file a word comp claim. they would deplete them of half a million dollars of health care benefits, hand the person a check for $25,000, and send them back across the border with a disability from a spinal surgery.
Starting point is 00:29:30 Work comp patients are like an ATM card. They are a money generated for them. They want to push them into all those business units and deplete them of all his benefits. And they don't care of. If he rehabs or not. Bill says in the 2000s, most of the action in California was in pharmaceuticals. During this period of time from 2002 to 2009, pharmaceuticals was the big dog. 50% of work comp, $13 billion. They'd see doctors, clinics, and other medical providers billing insane amounts. For example, take this drug, Renadidine. This is the drug that they bought for $18.
Starting point is 00:30:14 or paid $18 for, but they billed $532 for it. Every single patient got this drug plus four additional. And so you can see how much money is made off of that. But it was also everything else. What I call the Wheel of Fortune. The truly sophisticated operators would get business all around the wheel. Transportation services to take patients to and from appointments. translation services for non-English speakers, prescriptions and pharmaceuticals,
Starting point is 00:30:50 and also all the regular medical services, from doctor's appointments to imaging and diagnostics, all the way up to full-on surgeries. You just can't drop your guard around these guys because you're dealing with so much money, so much money. I mean, a typical back surgery is 80 to 82,000. On the average, these guys were $450,000. 475,000, just the one corner of the Wheel of Fortune was almost a half million dollars. Another example is that doctors would find loopholes in order to bill more. Say a doctor wants to give you an injection for pain. In his office, he could bill, say, $800 for that. But if you happen to
Starting point is 00:31:37 have another office right across the hall that has an EKG machine, some oxygen in the corner in case something happens, suddenly it's an ambulatory surgical center, and you can bill $15,000 for the exact same procedure. But nothing never ever happens. It's just a loose nugget in the law that allows them to capitalize on that. So we're talking about lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of money, like hundreds of millions of dollars. And patients, some of whom actually need real care, are unknowingly slipping into this medical
Starting point is 00:32:20 netherworld, where they become, well, like an ATM car. So this is the Southern California Workers' Comp World that, after leaving Ohio, hanging out in Estonia for a little while, a little German vacation, an MBA from the Wharton School, Munir Uwaita decides to set up shopping. In 2004, Munir sets up a company called Frontline Medical. His empire would eventually grow to include over 30 different companies, all of which authorities alleged were controlled by him in some way or another. Even though the actual names on the companies, the majority owners, the directors, the officers, etc., were not him.
Starting point is 00:33:02 These companies were all around that wheel of fortune. MRI and imaging companies, a surgery, Center, a pharmaceutical company, a transportation company, the list goes on. Bill says back then there were two players who were just milk in the hell out of the workers' comp system. And through his investigation, he can see when Munir started working with them. I know that one of the contracts he had was dated back in 2002. So that's probably the start of his transition into the California fraud scheme. What I could tell you is that in 2000, there were complaints about Munir that he wasn't performing his own surgeries.
Starting point is 00:33:44 I mentioned this in an earlier episode. It eventually turned into an investigation by the California Medical Board that became a formal disciplinary action and would eventually lead to his medical license being revoked. Why would he do this? Well, it could be any number of reasons. Maybe he wanted more billings. There are examples in the early 2000s of doctors claiming to do multiple surgeries a day.
Starting point is 00:34:07 Some by their physician assistants. And then billing for over a million dollars for one day's work. It's just unconscionable when one of the individual doctors, he started at 5 o'clock in the morning. And my partner went over and finally got him to come out around 9 o'clock from the operating room in his scrubs. And while he's talking to him, the guy's drunk off his ass. he's doing these surgeries drunk. And the hospital was turning their head to this because he's bringing in too much money.
Starting point is 00:34:47 Maybe Muneer was just too busy to do the surgeries himself. He was growing a medical empire after all, and that takes time. It takes a lot of phone calls. You're managing a whole staff, multiple staffs. Regardless, Bill says each innovation and fraud quickly spread. Everyone was learning from each other, working together, referring to each other, getting kickbacks for those referrals. You figure out a unique, new way to build the system? Well, once one individual does that, oh man, the train has left the station.
Starting point is 00:35:22 It's being replicated by provider after provider. The greedy you are, the deeper you're going to go. He thinks Munir learned from these fraudster bigwigs. And soon he says, rose to the top. top. It was follow the money. I equate it just like a drug dealer. You got a drug dealer who's stealing grams and then you go to the next guy who's dealing an eight ball to a pound and the guy who's stealing a kilo and then he's in a multi-kilo. Well, that's how I equated your weight he followed that money to get up to be the top of the pyramid.
Starting point is 00:36:01 And for the most part, it was fine. Business was humming. Sure, some other insurance investigators were digging into frontline medical and Moeneer, but the authorities, they had murderers to catch. They used to deal with. Crimes where there was a clear victim, a clear perpetrator, and cases that opened and closed. Until. Juliana Redding was found brutally murdered. This was a slow, brutal murder. A Santa Monica detective in a very much. Investigating the murder of Juliana Redding started hearing things. Not about the murder, but something with even more victims.
Starting point is 00:36:44 And money. Lots of money. Her investigation led her to a Santa Monica storage facility. She opened a door, she looked inside, and found boxes. Boxes and boxes and boxes. It became obvious that these documents related to dozens of and dozens of shell companies or other companies that were related to Ueda, that touched on what the homicide detective was hearing from witnesses,
Starting point is 00:37:16 allegations that he was engaged in massive health care fraud. Next time, on doctor's orders. From that point on, I was going to the medical clinic at least twice a week. It just hurts so bad. I can't even describe it. And I was like popping pills. Had a real estate empire, he had racing cars, he had dogs, he had horses. He was running all these things.
Starting point is 00:37:39 How does one person do all that? One of the first pieces of evidence that we found was a bill that was submitted to an insurance company for treatment by a doctor. Well, that doctor on that date was in jail. That's in episode five. Ashes to Ashes. Don't want to wait for the next episode? You don't have to. Unlock all episodes of doctor's orders ad-free right now by subscribing to the binge podcast channel.
Starting point is 00:38:10 Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple. Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the binge channel on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. Doctor's Orders is produced by Western Sound for Sony Music Entertainment's The Binge. The executive producer and host is me, Ben Adair. The executive producer for The Binge is Jonathan Hirsch.
Starting point is 00:38:46 Doctor's Orders was written and produced by Neda Salem. It was edited by Ben Adair. Lila Hassan is our fact-checker. Legal review by Davis-Rite-Tremaine, LLP. Michael Rayfield is the mix engineer. Next up, episode five. Ashes to Ashes. A boy goes missing from a bus stop in Queensland, Australia.
Starting point is 00:39:14 His disappearance made national headlines and launched the largest search for a missing child in Australia's history. There were over 700 persons of interest. It was absolutely enormous. Now, for the first time, his parents share with a global, audience their journey to uncover what happened to their son. We'd said right from the start, who's ever responsible had picked on the wrong family, so we just made it our life's work, we're going to hunt you down.
Starting point is 00:39:42 And if not for the parents, the case might still be unsolved. But in the end, the pressure led cops to take shocking risks and go to extraordinary lengths to catch this perpetrator. The master deceiver was deceived and manipulated himself. We did to him what he did to Daniel. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Where Is Daniel Morecam. Available now on The Binge. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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