Indicted witness in hepatitis C case upset

Tonya Rushing, a key witness in the district attorney's criminal case against Dr. Dipak Desai, lashed out at federal prosecutors Thursday, a day after they indicted her and the physician on health care fraud charges.

"I feel betrayed," said Rushing, who ran Desai's endoscopy clinics at the center of a hepatitis C outbreak. "I feel like a pawn. I don't know who to trust anymore."

In an interview, Rushing said she not only cooperated with the district attorney's office in the past year but also with the federal prosecutors who obtained her indictment.

"They know I don't have the means, like Desai, to fight them," she said. "I'm an easy target. They're taking the easy way out."

Desai, 61, a gastroenterologist who gave up his medical license after the hepatitis outbreak, and Rushing, 43, were charged in the federal indictment with one count of conspiracy, 25 counts of health care fraud and a forfeiture count seeking to seize $8.1 million. The case mirrors some charges county prosecutors filed against Desai in June after a Las Vegas police investigation.

The indictment alleges the pair carried out a scheme from January 2005 through February 2008 to inflate the length of medical procedures and overbill health insurance companies.

Nurse anesthetists at the clinics were ordered to falsify anesthesia times for endoscopies and colonoscopies, listing 31 minutes of anesthesia for each procedure though they rarely required that much time, the indictment alleged.

Rushing denied participating in any criminal scheme, saying she only did what she was told to do.

"I was just processing the billing," she said. "We relied on ethical physicians to give us appropriate and accurate documentation.

"If they can do this to me, then every office manager, every billing company, every billing manager needs to be aware that this could happen to them."

Rushing said she doesn't understand why federal authorities went after her "instead of the people who committed the wrongdoing."

As many as a dozen nurse anesthetists were involved in reporting anesthesia times at Desai's clinics, but none of the nurses was charged in the federal case, she said.

"The bottom line is this: I'm not going to do what Desai did and run away," she said. "I did nothing wrong. I cooperated. I'm the smallest person in this whole case, and I'm going to speak out for the little person and myself."

U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Natalie Collins did not return a call for comment.

Rushing said she decided to cooperate after discovering that a lawyer Desai had retained for her was not looking out for her interests in the criminal case.

She hired lawyer Louis Schneider, who helped her deal with authorities.

Schneider said Rushing was so helpful to the district attorney's office that it did not charge her.

"It was such a convoluted, complicated case," Schneider said. "She helped them understand an awful lot about it."

Schneider said federal prosecutors never promised not to charge her, but he had hoped her cooperation would have precluded her indictment.

And now that she has been charged, Schneider said, he is instructing her not to talk to any law enforcement agencies.

That is a blow to the district attorney's office, which expects to call her as one of its chief witnesses next year at the District Court trial of Desai and two of his nurse anesthetists, Keith Mathahs and Ronald Lakeman.

The trio face several felony charges, including racketeering, insurance fraud and neglect of patients.

The charges revolve around seven people whom authorities say were infected with the potentially deadly hepatitis C virus at Desai's endoscopy clinics.

Despite facing state criminal charges, Mathahs cooperated with federal authorities in obtaining the indictment against Rushing and Desai, said his lawyer, Michael Cristalli.

Desai's trial on the state charges remains on hold while officials at Lakes Crossing, the state's mental hospital, determine whether Desai is competent to help his lawyers in court.

In March, under orders from District Judge Jackie Glass, Desai was taken to Lakes Crossing for observation. Two court-appointed medical experts from Las Vegas had found him incompetent to stand trial because of two strokes in recent years.

The police investigation began shortly after health officials disclosed the hepatitis C outbreak in February 2008. Desai came under scrutiny after the Southern Nevada Health District linked cases of hepatitis C to his clinics.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135.