In United States v. Omidi, --- F.4th ---, 23-1959 (9th Cir. 2025), the Court affirmed the district court’s forfeiture judgment of nearly $100 million in a case in which Julian Omidi and his business, Surgery Center Management, LLC (SCM), were convicted of charges arising from their “Get Thin” scheme in which Omidi and SCM defrauded insurance companies by submitting false claims for reimbursement.
Here, the government sought forfeiture of the proceeds of Omidi and SCM’s mail and wire fraud violations under 18 U.S.C. § 981(a)(1)(C) and 28 U.S.C. § 2461(c). While 18 U.S.C. § 981 governs civil forfeiture actions, 28 U.S.C. § 2461(c) “permits the government to seek criminal forfeiture whenever civil forfeiture is available and the defendant is found guilty of the offense[.]” United States v. Newman, 659 F.3d 1235, 1239 (9th Cir. 2011) (emphasis omitted), abrogated on other grounds by Honeycutt v. United States, 581 U.S. 443, 454 (2017). When applicable, such forfeiture is mandatory. Id. at 1240; 28 U.S.C. § 2461(c). If the government seeks forfeiture of specific property, such as the proceeds at issue here, it must establish “the requisite nexus between the property and the offense,” Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.2(b)(1)(A), by a preponderance of the evidence.The question in this case is whether the district court erred in ordering the forfeiture of all Get Thin’s proceeds, even though conceivably some of the incoming funds ultimately paid for legitimate and medically necessary procedures. After a review of the relevant law and facts, we conclude that the district court got it right.[W]e follow our sister circuits to conclude that in a forfeiture case seeking proceeds of a fraud scheme under § 981(a)(1)(C), there is no so-called “100% Fraud Rule.” All proceeds directly or indirectly derived from a health care fraud scheme like Get Thin—even if a downstream legitimate transaction conceivably generated some of those proceeds—must be forfeited. The district court did not err in so concluding.
