By R. Scott Moxley, OC Weekly
Republican pol Van Tran aided friend, a Medicare cheat
A Little Saigon doctor with hefty California Republican Party connections isn’t celebrating these holidays at home with family and friends.
Vietnam War refugee, Tuan Duc Tran–CEO of Fountain Valley Healthcare Center and the eldest son of a once high-ranking South Vietnamese Army officer–is presenting living in a federal prison in Kern County.
After being indicted on nine counts by a 2011 federal grand jury, Tran hired defense lawyer Steven Baric, then vice chairman of the California Republican Party and now a Rancho Santa Margarita city councilman–in an attempt to defeat the charges.
But that move didn’t succeed and, in June, the doctor, who received a medical degree in the West Indies, formally admitted he’d operated a multi-year Medicare scam to steal more than $2.4 million from the U.S. Government.
“[Tran] administered medical tests in an improper manner so that he could claim that the test results demonstrated medical need for procedures when the patients, in reality, did not need the treatment,” according to Assistant United States Attorney Lawrence E. Kole.
Facing a maximum punishment of 20 years in prison, Tran–whose father also served as South Vietnam’s military attache at Vietnam’s Embassy in Washington, D.C. from 1966 to 1968–solicited the aid of the nation’s first Vietnamese politician elected to a state legislature: Onetime Garden Grove Mayor Van Tran, a Republican.
Read the full article by R. Scott Moxley from OC Weekly.
