A Southern California chiropractor accused of illegally running a law firm to funnel injured workers into his network of medical clinics to churn bills was ordered to serve more than 54 years in state prison and fined $23 million, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office announced.

Peyman Heidary, 53, was ordered to serve 54 years and eight months in a state prison at a sentencing hearing Friday. He was also ordered to pay more than $23 million in fines for his role in orchestrating what prosecutors said was a $150 million work comp fraud scheme.

A jury in January convicted Peyman Heidary, 53, on 68 counts of insurance fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and other charges. An indictment filed in 2016 accused him of illegally running a law practice, laundering money and defrauding work comp carriers.

The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office sought the indictment after voluntarily dismissing a 25-count felony complaint filed in 2014.

The grand jury indictment claims Heidary, who is not an attorney, controlled the day-to-day operations of California Injury Lawyers and instructed the firm’s actual owner, Cary Abramowitz, to pay cappers $100 for each patient they signed as a client.

Cappers allegedly had claimants sign blank forms that the law firm filled out later. Once patients signed the forms, they were sent to one of the six clinics Heidary controlled: Riverside Health Clinic, Corona Health Clinic, Santa Ana Health Clinic, Anaheim Health Clinic, Montebello Health Clinic and Bellflower Health Clinic.

Patients received the same assortment of treatments including massage, chiropractic treatment, acupuncture and psychiatric counseling.

“Although originally charged with $98 million in fraud, evidence presented at trial, including Heidary’s testimony, revealed that the actual damage was about $150 million,” the Riverside County DA’s Office said in a statement. “During the sentencing hearing on April 12, Judge Charles Koosed noted that Heidary possessed deep knowledge of the workers’ compensation system, stating, ‘[Heidary] took advantage of that knowledge based on greed.’”

The Division of Workers’ Compensation on April 3 issued notice of intent to suspend Heidary from participating in the system under the 2016 law that prevents anyone convicted of fraud or financial crimes from treating injured workers.

The division finalized the suspension of Abramowitz in February. He pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his involvement in the scheme in 2020. The State Bar of California disbarred him in 2022.

The division in 2017 suspended Jason Hui-Tek Yang, who pleaded guilty in 2016 to charges relating to his writing false medical-legal reports as part of Heidary’s scheme.

Data from the DWC website shows that the agency has suspended 1,316 providers since anti-fraud provisions from AB 1244 went into effect at the start of 2017.

The division suspended 166 providers in 2017 and another 175 in 2018 before activity nosedived. The agency suspended another 130 providers over the next three years combined, including just five suspensions in 2021.

That was followed by a rebound that saw 261 providers being suspended in 2022, another 392 suspended last year and 191 who have been suspended so far in 2024. DWC data shows another 89 suspensions were pending as of Monday.

Heidary’s sentence appears to be harsher than punishments handed down to other fraudsters.

When the Orange County District Attorney’s Office announced that Dr. Randy Rosen was sentenced to 10 years in state prison, it called the sentence “the largest prison sentence for a provider in California workers’ compensation insurance fraud.”

The Beverly Hills surgeon pleaded guilty in 2022 to eight felony counts of insurance fraud and two aggravated white-collar enhancements for a loss of more than $500,000 in two separate cases that involved recruiting and hiring body brokers to find and pay patients to undergo unnecessary Naltrexone implant surgeries and cortisone shots, county prosecutors said in a statement.

The DWC suspended Rosen in 2023.

Sam Solakyan was ordered to pay $27.9 million in restitution and serve five years in federal prison for what the U.S. Attorney’s Office said was a $250 million fraud scheme. Solakyan was CEO of several imaging companies and was convicted by a jury on 12 counts related to paying bribes and kickbacks for work comp patient referrals.

The DWC suspended Solakyan in 2021.

Michael D. Drobot, the former owner of Pacific Hospital of Long Beach, was sentenced to 63 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $10 million for masterminding a spinal surgery scheme. Federal prosecutors initially said Drobot paid $40 million to $50 million in bribes in a scheme that generated around $500 million in fraudulent bills. However, in a statement announcing additional charges after Drobot tried to steal money he was supposed to hand over to the court, the U.S. Attorney’s Office described the Pacific Hospital case as a “nearly $1 billion health care fraud scheme.”

The DWC suspended Drobot in 2017.