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Unwitting accident victims were recruited as plaintiffs and then persuaded to undergo serious, sometimes needless, surgeries. The participants appeared to act independently but instead colluded.
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Prosecutors charge that a group of top Las Vegas plaintiffs lawyers and doctors, with the 64-year-old Awand at its center, conspired in an audacious fraud. But she had stumbled into the middle of what prosecutors would later allege was a massive conspiracy whose participants, witnesses told the FBI, dubbed themselves the "medical mafia." As she described the case and listed the doctors involved, Turner interrupted, saying, "They're all connected to Awand." Working late one Friday night, Cohen called a former colleague, William Turner, who was then managing attorney for the Las Vegas office of Farmers Insurance. For a minor traffic accident, Johnson had seen no fewer than eight doctors and racked up more than $40,000 in medical bills. attorney's civil division.Īlmost immediately, Cohen sensed something strange. But it would come to mean everything to her lawyer: Instead of facing a local defense attorney, Vannah was squaring off against Ruth Cohen, a seasoned lawyer in the U.S.
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Unbeknown to Vannah, the driver was a federal prosecutor who had been in his car on government business. Meanwhile, her lawyer, Vannah, filed suit against the driver who hit Johnson, asking for a minimum of $200,000 in damages. The doctor asserted that if she didn't, her pain would be 20 times worse in 10 years, she recalls.
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Yet each time she saw Kabins, she says, he urged her to undergo spinal surgery. "Over the next six weeks, I had so many doctor's appointments that I couldn't keep up," recalls Johnson, who was grateful for the attention but also confused by a directive from Vannah's office: Don't mention Howard Awand's name to anybody.Īs Johnson underwent cortisone injections and physical therapy, her pain began to ease.
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Such agreements mean injured parties pay nothing unless they collect a settlement if that happens, the person holding the lien (which could be a plaintiffs lawyer, a doctor, or a hospital) is then paid from the settlement. On her first visit to Vannah's office, she signed a medical lien. Johnson couldn't believe her luck.īetter still, she didn't have to pay any money upfront. All for a routine accident on the way to work. After examining her, the surgeon referred her to several other doctors and said that Awand had also arranged for her to see one of the town's most prominent plaintiffs attorneys, Robert Vannah. Awand (pronounced AY-wand) managed to get her an appointment that night with one of the busiest spine surgeons in the country, Mark Kabins. No more than 30 minutes later she got a call from a man named Howard Awand, who said he was in the business of handling such cases. Worried about the costs, she consulted a physician friend, who pledged to find someone to help her. She went to her regular doctor but was told that she'd have to pay all her treatment costs upfront, since a car accident could result in lawsuits and her health insurance might not cover her. But Johnson woke up the next day with back pain. The accident, on June 12, 2002, might have been forgotten.
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No one seemed hurt, and the drivers exchanged information. Cynthia Johnson, an office manager for a real estate company, was driving to work on Interstate 15 near the Las Vegas strip when a fellow commuter clipped the rear bumper of her Toyota Avalon, propelling it into the truck in front. LAS VEGAS (Fortune) - It began as the most ordinary of fender-benders.