Doctor’s Orders | 4. Wheel of Fortune

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Binge Cases – Doctor’s Orders | Episode 4: Wheel of Fortune

Podcast: The Binge Cases: Doctor's Orders
Episode: 4. Wheel of Fortune
Host: Ben Adair (Sony Music Entertainment)
Release Date: August 22, 2025

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Overview

The fourth episode of “Doctor’s Orders” delves into the enigmatic Dr. Munir Uwayda’s path from an esteemed surgeon to an alleged mastermind of massive health care fraud. Through firsthand accounts, investigative reporting, and interviews with those who crossed his path, the episode uncovers how Uwayda’s globe-trotting ambition entangled him in scandals spanning continents, ultimately leading to a $150 million scam operation. The episode explores his early life, romantic entanglements, real estate ventures, and, crucially, the health insurance fraud ecosystem in California.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Enigma of Dr. Munir Uwayda

• Origins and Upbringing (03:31–04:40)

  • Munir was born in 1966 in Lebanon to a highly respected doctor, Dr. Marwan Uwayda, who was a pioneer in infection control and antibiotic use in Lebanon.
  • “[Munir's father] is very, very talented and clearly kind of a pioneer in his field ... It's kind of very interesting to see how far the apple fell from the tree.”
    — Mayan Amsad (Investigative Reporter), (04:13)

• Education and Early Career (04:40–05:58)

  • Munir studied medicine at the American University of Beirut, followed by training at NYU, Harvard, and Stanford.
  • Relationships with various beauty queens — notably, Eha Erbsalu (runner-up Miss Estonia 1988).

2. Van Wert, Ohio: The First Red Flags

• Recruitment and Integration (05:46–06:27)

  • Munir arrives in Van Wert, Ohio, as an orthopedic surgeon, alongside his fiancée and show dogs, immediately attracting local attention for his glamorous lifestyle.

• Modeling Agency Diversion (07:02–07:49)

  • Opens “E M Model Management,” recruiting foreign models and creating a neighborhood stir.

• Hospital Financial Shenanigans (08:16–12:31)

  • Munir bills nearly $2 million in six months—a red flag due to the gap between what’s billed and what’s collected.
  • Attempts at reconciliation with the hospital devolve into legal battles; Munir sues the hospital and the then-CEO Mark Minick personally.
  • “He kind of used attorneys as a fungible good.”
    — Mark Minick (11:36)
  • Munir forges his attorney’s signature, absconds with escrow funds, and ultimately disappears after resigning to escape peer review scrutiny.

3. Glamorous Facade in Estonia & Germany

• Tabloid Life and Real Estate Expansion (15:07–19:07)

  • Munir’s love triangle with two Miss Estonias grabs tabloid attention.
  • Rapid property acquisitions in Estonia—luxury apartments and an undeveloped manor intended for horses and exotic animals.

• German Connection and New Relationships (21:00–22:45)

  • In Verden, Germany (a hub for equestrian culture), Munir begins a relationship with a young woman, Julia Koffler, and opens another horse farm, “Gestut Eichenhain.”
  • Julia moves to California, has twins with Munir, and soon becomes embroiled in custody disputes as Munir increasingly globalizes his operations.

4. Rise of a Medical Fraud Empire (25:25–34:01)

• California: The Heart of Healthcare Fraud

  • “California is the training center for all healthcare fraud and abuse.”
    — Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator), (25:25)
  • Introduction of Bill Reynolds, a veteran medical fraud investigator, who maps out how Munir joined an ecosystem rife with criminal opportunity.

• Work Comp Mills and the Wheel of Fortune (26:00–29:23)

  • Doctors conducted unnecessary procedures and overbilled insurance, exploiting legal loopholes (e.g., converting offices into ambulatory surgical centers).
  • “Work comp patients are like an ATM card ... they want to push him into all those business units and deplete him of all his benefits.”
    — Bill Reynolds (26:53–27:49)

• Munir’s Business Model: Diversification and Control (30:01–31:36)

  • Munir founds Frontline Medical in 2004, expanding his reach through 30+ shell companies across pharmaceuticals, imaging, surgery centers, and ancillary services.
  • Fraud tactics become standard—billings for drugs bought for $18 but invoiced at over $500, surgeries done by unlicensed or inebriated personnel, systemic kickbacks.

• From Student to Mastermind (33:16–34:01)

  • Munir’s participation escalates as he learns from established fraudsters.
  • “He followed that money to get up to be the top of the pyramid.”
    — Bill Reynolds (33:35)

5. The Tipping Point: Homicide Meets Fraud

• Connection to Juliana Redding’s Murder (34:01–35:24)
  • A murder investigation uncovers a trove of documents in a Santa Monica storage unit, directly tying Munir's shell corporations to the health care fraud scheme.
  • “...became obvious that these documents related to dozens and dozens of shell companies or other companies that were related to Uwayda.”
    — Ben Adair (34:52)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the scale of fraud:
  “You just can't drop your guard around these guys because you're dealing with so much money, so much money.”
  — Bill Reynolds (28:59)

• On the consequences for patients:
  “I think I reviewed 500 surgeries—I think it was 12% of the people died within six months ... They don't care if he rehabs or not.”
  — Bill Reynolds (26:53)

• On Munir’s character:
  “He was not a great partner ... but then some of the things post-wise—maybe we just thought he was a basic crook.”
  — Mark Minick (13:01)

• On Estonian media coverage:
  “Certain outlets in the Estonian press do not seem to give AF about certain journalistic standards. They call Munir at different times, a womanizer, an exotic charmer, an evil genius...”
  — Ben Adair (16:34)

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Important Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|:-------------:| | Introduction & focus on Munir Uwayda’s whereabouts | 00:31–01:57 | | Munir’s early life and family background | 03:31–04:40 | | Van Wert, Ohio period & initial hospital disputes | 05:46–12:31 | | Modeling agency and neighborhood impact | 07:02–07:49 | | Love triangle and real estate in Estonia | 15:07–19:07 | | German relationship and horse farm expansion | 21:00–22:45 | | Explanation of healthcare/work comp fraud in California | 25:25–29:52 | | Building the medical empire – Frontline and shell companies | 30:01–31:36 | | Munir’s rise to fraud ringleader | 33:16–34:01 | | Detective’s discovery in Santa Monica storage unit | 34:01–35:24 |

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Tone and Style

The episode maintains an investigative, often incredulous tone, blending true crime drama with dark humor and global intrigue. Ben Adair’s narration underscores both the complexity and the audacious absurdity of Munir’s multifaceted schemes, using frank asides (“...certain outlets in the Estonian press do not seem to give AF...”) and expert voices to peel back the layers of the story.

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Concluding Notes

This episode weaves a complex, international tapestry detailing both the personal and criminal evolution of Dr. Munir Uwayda. Through celebrity escapades, high-profile relationships, and ultimately, a sophisticated fraud operation, listeners get an in-depth look at how a seemingly high-flying doctor came to be at the center of one of California's largest insurance scams—culminating in a murder investigation that promises even more shocking revelations in the episodes ahead.

Transcript

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[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Listen to all episodes of Doctor's Orders ad free right now by subscribing to the binge. Visit the Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access. Wherever you listen the Binge feed your true crime obsession. The binge where is Munir? Where is Munir? 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 or as a named defendant in a mega health insurance scam.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

Okay, we didn't really know where Ueda was, so we went about trying to find uieda.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

It's a decades old occupation. This is Mark Minick.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

And as we tried to find Ueda through different sources, investigative sources, we popped up all kinds of stuff.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

In 1999, Mark was the CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital in a really small town in Ohio, probably about hour.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

And 15 minutes south of Toledo.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

And for a while in the early 2000s, he and a team were trying to track down Munir Ueda.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

You know, we popped 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 Word 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. It's just absolutely amazing. The guy has left this kind of trail over, you know, 25 years.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

The path Dr. Munir Uwayda 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.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

I'm Ben Adair from Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound. 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.

[Mayan Amsad (Investigative Reporter from Beirut)]

Now, Munir's father, the family is originally from Tripoli. Now, this is kind of a known, more impoverished area in the country.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Munir Yaweda's origin story starts with a father who was by most everyone's account, a superhero.

[Mayan Amsad (Investigative Reporter from Beirut)]

Marwana Waida, who is Munir's father, trained in internal medicine at the American University of.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

This is Mayan Amsad. She's part of an investigative reporting duo based in Beirut, Lebanon. And she told me that Marwan Yawayda 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.

[Mayan Amsad (Investigative Reporter from Beirut)]

That was the year that Muni Rawaida was born. And that is when he introduced the specialty of infectious diseases, the practices of infection control and antibiotic utilization. So you have this man who is very, very talented and clearly kind of 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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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 professor there. Her specialty is in anti corruption and ethical business practices for accountants worldwide 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 Aha Erbselou. She's the oldest romantic relationship that we could find for Munir. Eiha was the runner up for Ms. Estonia in 1988, and she was also in New York in the 1990s. After all that, a job in Van Wirt, Ohio.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

We were looking for an orthopedic surgeon, probably 1998, 99. And we had put out a recruitment contract and he was one of our candidates who did a visit to Van Wirt.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

This is Mark Minick again, former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital in Van Wirt, Ohio. I just really like saying Van Wirt.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

Well, I would say we're a typical Midwestern community. Van Wert county is probably a population base of about 31,000. Van Wert City itself is about 11,000. You know, the county Fair is one of the big events of the year. All the things you kind of see about the Midwest in the movies kind of epitomizes band work.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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 fiance, along with an avid interest in horses, like, really fancy horses.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

The year Eha and Munir moved to Ohio, they also started a modeling agency called E M Model Management. According to media reports, the agency was offering foreign models potential work in America.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

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 Miss Estonia or another Miss Estonia contestant. But they were there for a while, too, and their appearance eventually led to Aha's disappearance, so to speak.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Soon Aha, the now former fiance, had left, and Ms. Estonia 1998. Kadri Valhutz had arrived. She was also Ms. 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.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

And we're thinking, well, Harvard's the gold standard. We're thinking Stanford's the gold standard.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

But hospitals rarely, like, hire doctors like on a W2. When Munir arrived in Van Wirtz, 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, the Munir would pay that money back. It was like an advance.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Mark says he'd build almost $2 million in under six months.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

And I would be the first one to say he built it up very quickly.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

But billed does not mean collected. So this is where things get a little confusing, but it's important. So I'm going to explain. 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. You're all, did that really happen? And it cost how much? The thing is, doctors never expect to get all that money. They know they're used, usually just paid a fraction of it. Like one insurance company might pay, say, 45% of what's billed. Medicare might pay like 80%. So what doctors bill and what they get can be really, really different. And it causes this very real temptation.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

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 write their own paycheck.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

So hospitals like Van Wert County Hospital have a layer of oversight called peer review to make sure doctors aren't ordering unnecessary things.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

In other words, is what he's doing appropriate?

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Insurance companies do their own reviews too. And this is maybe where some of that whole insurance company is 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 over billing. So here's Munir Yewayda 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.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

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, work with him, and all of a sudden we get slapped with a lawsuit. 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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

It took 18 months to litigate.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

I think he went through five different attorneys in the process. He kind of used attorneys as a fungible good.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

In the end, Mark and the Van Work County Hospital prevailed. The judge ordered Munir to repay over $400,000. But remember, what gets billed versus what gets collected.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

So we had put the money in escrow, and the only people that could get access to the escrow were, were the attorneys. We went to the escrow, the money was gone. Dr. Ueda had forged his attorney's name and taken the money and absconded with it. Judge Carr had some kind words for Dr. Ueda's attorney, who Dr. Ueda hoodwinked along with everybody else. So we had the judgment, but we didn't have the money.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Meanwhile, Munir had already like disappeared like months ago.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

He's kind of vanished in the dead of night.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

When faced with that peer review for his almost $2 million in charges, Munir resigned his hospital privileges, which effectively squashed any inquiry.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Mark still doesn't know how much money Munir made while working in Van Wirt.

[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

I guess our impression of Uwaita was ok. 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 of things. But I don't know that he had advanced that far. I don't know that he was into it to the hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, and then, then the whole Juliana Redding thing, you know, maybe just got deeper and deeper, but we just thought he was, you know, a basic crook.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Mark and his lawyers did eventually track Munir to California and they did get their money. They may be the only ones to have gotten any money back from Dr. Munir Ueda.

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[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Before the murder of Juliana Redding, before the alleged empire of corruption, Munir Ueda first made headlines in the gossip pages in Estonia.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

My name is Olga Ronema. I'm an investigative reporter from Estonia and the first article that I found mentioning Munir was published in October 1999.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

So this is right at the same time things are going sideways in Van Wirtz.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

Definitely they were local celebrities.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

The entire country is 1.3, 1.44 million people. So it's super tiny.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Tallinn, the capital, was an old medieval town. Today it's close to a half million people.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

It's a very lovely place to be and today it's known a lot for its really vibrant startup community.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

So you got the boyfriend of two Mrs. Miss Estonia 1988 runner up now being seen around town with Miss Estonia 1998. People are going to start talking, you.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

Know that with any love triangle involving two misses it will create quite a bit of attention and then people will be talking about it. So media did write about it quite a lot at that time.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

The headline from November 15, 1999 reads very direct, Kajai Valhats with Eha Erbsilu's partner. Then, not two months later, on January 4, 2000, did Cadre Belhatz secretly get married abroad? The article says from one misses Cuddle to another. In recent months, Kadre Valhat, 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. The mysterious companion is former Ms. Eha Erbsalu'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 womanizer, an exotic charmer, an evil genius and pretty much just assume all the charges against him are true. Different country, different rules.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

I traded an email with Eiha, but she didn't want to comment for the story. We also emailed Khadri, but never heard back. After the drama of the love triangle settled down, Munir and Cadre got down to business.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

I think it was in 2000 that they started buying up real estate in Estonia.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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 of a million bucks today. Then they bought an historic country manor. Think like Bridgerton. Big house with a collection of buildings, sprawling grounds like an historic estate.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

They bought it for 10 million Estonian crowns.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

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 needed special permission to bring a chimpanzee from Lebanon to a farm.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

The Estonian press also reported that around that same time, Munir was leaving Estonia, quite often leaving Kadri at home. An article in the paper's Stars section is headlined, Munir and Kadri believe that the separation is temporary. Cadre is quoted. The family is in Estonia and being with the family makes Munir happier than anything else.

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

So Kadri used that opportunity to express that she didn't really understand what that fuss was about. That they are clearly in love. They were looking into each other's eyes even when Munir is in the United States doing his mba. But they are calling each other two times a day. But we are clearly, clearly, clearly in love.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Sounds very much like what you'd see in like a Hollywood celebrities trying to quash rumors about whatever, you know?

[Olga Ronema (Investigative Reporter from Estonia)]

Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't know much about it.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Just going to say Holger is a very accomplished investigative journalist, usually focused on Russia, financial crimes, stuff like that. I did get the feeling that this celebrity gossip stuff was kinda beneath him. During this period, Munir also pursued an MBA program at the very prestigious Wharton 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, and potentially very, very lucrative. But then something changed.

[Rob Hyde (Freelance Investigative Reporter in Germany)]

So I've just arrived at Ferden Ander Allerg Ferdinanda. Alle is basically Fjorden on the river Alle. And as soon as you arrive in Fjaden and Der Alle and you look at the train station where I am now, it says Reiterstadt, which literally means rider's city or equestrian city.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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, Munir was spending time in the German countryside in a small town called Verden. Verden is smack dab in the middle of Germany's ancestral center for horse breeding and equestrian sports.

[Rob Hyde (Freelance Investigative Reporter in Germany)]

It's incredibly scenic. You're riding through farms and you're seeing the windmills, all the fields and then the horses, and it kind of gets you in the mood of it.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

According to German media reports, Munir'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. She was 19 at the time, he was 35.

[Rob Hyde (Freelance Investigative Reporter in Germany)]

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 and I liked him a lot. And she was completely unaware that he had already married.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Rob's quoting from an interview with Julia published in 2016 in the German newspaper Kreuzeitung. The article says that Julia identified a property near Ferdin similar to the Estonian estate. Julia says, quote, he wanted to buy something. I found it with my contacts in Feriden. This is it. I knew immediately. I talked him into it. It was our project. We both enjoyed it. They named the horse farm Gestut 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. 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. How could Munir afford all this? Where was the money coming from?

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[Mark Minick (Former CEO of Van Wirt County Hospital)]

The one.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

Thing I could say was absolute certainty. California is the training center for all healthcare fraud and abuse.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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 Uada for over a decade now.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

My primary responsibility is California work comp. The fraud and abuse is just rampant. I had no idea.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

He has stories for days about the depth dangers and outrageous characters in the workers comp fraud world.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

There was one doctor who he traveled from facility to facility and he'd bring three physician's assistants 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. 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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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 nah man, this is actually life and death.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

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 work comp claim. They would deplete them of a 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. Work comp patients are like an ATM card. They are a money generator for them. They want to push him into all those business units and deplete him of all his benefits. And they don't care if he rehabs or not.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Bill says in the 2000s, most of the action in California was in pharmaceuticals.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

During this period of time, from 02 to 09, pharmaceuticals was the big dog. 50% of work comp, $13 billion.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

They'd see doctors, clinics and other medical providers billing insane amounts. For example, take this drug, ranatidine.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

This is the drug that they bought for $18 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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

But it was also everything else, what.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

I call the wheel of fortune.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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. And also all the regular medical services from doctor's appointments to imaging and diagnostics, all the way up to full on surgeries.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

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 to 475,000. Just the one corner of the wheel of fortune was almost a half million dollars.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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 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.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

But nothing never ever happens. It's just a loose nugget in the law that allows them to capitalize on that.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

So we're talking about 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 netherworld where they become, well, like an ATM card. So this is the Southern California workers comp world, that after leaving Ohio, hanging out in Estonia for a little while, little German vacation, an MBA from the Wharton School, Munir Ueda 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 allege were controlled by him. And in some way or another, even though the actual names on the companies, the majority owners, the directors, the officers, et cetera, were not him, 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 milking the hell out of the workers comp system. And through his investigation, he can see when Munir started working with them.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

What I can tell you is that in 2005, there were complaints about Munir that he wasn't performing his own surgeries. 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, some by their physician assistants. And then billing for over a million dollars for one day's work is just unconscionable.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

And 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.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Maybe Munir 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.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

Well, once one individual does that, oh, man, the train has left the station. It's being replicated by provider after provider. The greedy you are, the deeper you're going to go.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

He thinks Munir learned from these fraudster bigwigs. And soon, he says, rose to the top.

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

It was follow the money. I equate it just like a drug dealer. You got a drug dealer who's dealing grams, and then you go to the next guy who's stealing an eight ball to a pound, and the guy who's stealing a kilo and then a multi kilo. Well, that's how I equated Uweda. He followed that money to get up to be the top of the pyramid.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

And for the most part, it was fine. Business was humming. Sure, some other insurance investigators were digging into Frontline Medical and Munir, 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 investigating the murder of Juliana Redding started hearing things. Not about the murder, but something with even more victims. 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 and dozens of shell companies or other companies that were related to uada. That touched on what the homicide detective was hearing from witnesses. Allegations that he was engaged in massive health care fraud. Next time on Doctor's Orders.

[Mayan Amsad (Investigative Reporter from Beirut)]

From that point on, I was going to the medical clinic at least twice a week. It just hurt so bad, I can't even describe it. And I was like, popping pills.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

Had a real estate empire. He had racing cars, he had dogs, he had horses. He was running all these things. How does one person do all that?

[Bill Reynolds (Medical Fraud Investigator)]

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 while that doctor, on that date was in jail.

[Ben Adair (Host/Narrator)]

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. 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 1st 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 Benedaire. The executive producer for the Binge is Jonathan Hirsch. Doctor's Orders was written and produced by Nada Salem. It was edited by Ben Adair. Laila Hassan is our fact checker. Legal review by Davis Wright Tremaine llp. Michael Rayfield is the mix engineer. Next up Episode five Ashes to Ashes.

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