PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Wednesday announced wide-sweeping indictments across the state related to healthcare fraud.
Mayes’ offices brought charges against 42 defendants in 10 separate cases, spanning across five Arizona counties.
The cases range from allegations of fraudulent Medicaid billing to unlicensed medical practice, to exploitation of vulnerable adults, and manslaughter.
“These cases are different in their details, but they share a common thread: People who saw the healthcare system and the people who depended on that healthcare system as something to exploit,” Mayes said in a press conference Wednesday.
Among the cases, seven employees at a Tucson care facility were indicted in the 2023 death of an elderly woman.
In another case, a 30-year-old Phoenix woman is accused of performing Botox injections and lip fillers without proper licensing.
Body camera video of a 2024 search warrant shows how a now-convicted fraudster was living large. Thomas Heard enjoyed an ultra-luxury Gilbert home, fancy cars, designer watches, purses, and shoes, while the people he pretended to help get sober, suffered in squalor.
Heard was recently sentenced to two years in prison after prosecutors proved his business, Heard Health Care, was a scam.
He defrauded Arizona’s Medicaid program for years, to the tune of more than $34 million.
Mayes charged a Yuma doctor with six felony counts, including fraudulent schemes, theft, and conspiracy.
Her office also charged a Phoenix clinic and 18 individuals with a scheme to defraud Arizona’s Medicaid program out of more than $1 million in 2023.
A Nogales man is accused of falsely identifying as a licensed doctor and practicing medicine without a license. He allegedly performed a penile enlargement revision procedure on a patient, endangering the man’s life.
A Peoria man, who’s a licensed pharmacist, is suspected of generating fraudulent Oxycodone prescriptions and selling the drugs.
In another case, a 73-year-old woman from Snowflake is accused of practicing as a midwife from 2020 to 2025 without a license and faces six felony counts, including negligent homicide. According to the attorney general’s office, an unborn child died in utero last year, allegedly as a result of the woman’s negligence.
“We believe that unlicensed midwifery, in particular, is a rising and dangerous problem” in Arizona, Mayes said.
She added that their work is “definitely not done.”
“As long as there are people who are willing to bill for providing services to dead patients, to steal the identities of children, to neglect vulnerable adults in their care, my office will find them. We will charge them and we will hold them accountable. she said.
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