Doctor Billions | 1. Trust No One

In the middle of a national recession, Mark Sersansie was excited to get a 6-figure marketing job with a mysterious Southern California medical company. But by lunchtime on his very first day, he caught on – something very shady was happening. Want the full story? Binge every episode of Doctor Billions ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. Doctor Billions is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Listen to every episode of Dr. Billions ad-free right now when you subscribe to The Binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else get exclusive bonus episodes and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap Subscribe, or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are. The Binge: Feed your true crime obsession.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  So when you had the surgery, you were just shy of your 32nd birthday?

• 1:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  This is a woman named Derica Moses. She's testifying in court.

• 1:18Speaker 03

  I was working at Pepsi Bottle Company, and I would stock the store shelves. I'd bring in pallets to the store to stock.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Derica is telling the courtroom a story. It's a story about how she got injured on the job, and according to her and her lawyers, unwittingly became the victim of a bad doctor. What she didn't know then, what she only found out about much later, is that she wasn't the only victim. She was one of thousands.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  In high school and college, Derica had been an athlete. She went to the University of Utah on a softball scholarship, full ride. After, she started working for Pepsi.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Each pallet would be 1,200 pounds, and he'd use a manual pallet jack, and then he'd move it over to a soda pallet.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  One day, right before one of the biggest soda weekends in the country, Labor Day weekend, she was moving a mountain of cans and bottles from the truck to the store, and she felt a little...

• 2:14Speaker 03

  I just heard and felt a pop in my back.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Pop. Happened to me once. I wasn't even lifting anything, just bent over, twisted, changing the headlight on my wife's car. And suddenly, oh. I was laid out for weeks. I got better, eventually. Derica did not. And because she was injured on the job, Derica saw a doctor through her employer's workers' compensation insurance. This is the parallel medical insurance program that companies pay for so that people injured on the job get care fast and free. Derica found a doctor from workers' comp. She went to see him, and he said her back injury was very serious, and that she needed surgery. But...

• 3:02Speaker 03

  He told me that I would get between 90 and 95% better. And that's what gave me the hope to have the surgery done.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Her doctor also testified at this trial, and he denied telling Derica this. But this is an important moment for Derica. This is the moment she put her trust in this doctor. And given the story I'm about to tell you, it's worth probing this a little bit. Why do we trust doctors? We know they've been to school for a very long time to do the things they do. We know about the Hippocratic Oath, which has actually changed a lot over time, but the ethical framework is real. Physicians are supposed to prioritize the patient and patient care over all other concerns. We know that lots of people go to doctors. Probably a lot of people had been to this doctor, standing right in front of Derica.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  And if something was wrong with this guy, wouldn't something have happened? Mislicense revoked, or something?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  This bond of trust can be seen another way. To the bad actor, it's a moment of opportunity. An opportunity for more than you and I can imagine.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Derica was hopeful going in. It was her first surgery ever, and a serious one. She would get 23 pieces of hardware implanted in her back, screws and rods to stabilize her spine. She went through with it, and you know what? It seemed good.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  For the first couple of months, I thought I was getting better. You know, I thought the pain had decreased and all, but I realized it was the drugs I was on at the moment.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  The more time went on, the more pain she was in.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  I realized the pain hadn't gone anywhere. It just got worse.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Eventually, Derica realized the surgery had failed. She was 37 years old. Once, she was athletic. Now she struggled to get out of bed in the morning. Her mother moved in to help her with basic day-to-day tasks. She went back to her same doctor, and he found that some of the hardware around her spine had failed, broken loose, and she needed a new surgery to remove all the hardware he had put in. Derica trusted him. Why wouldn't she? He's a doctor. And her trust created another big opportunity.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  But then, just as she's going into that surgery, she makes one small request to the nurse.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  And so, when you went in for that removal surgery, you specifically asked somebody, "I'd like the hardware that's getting removed out of my back."

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Why did you do that?

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Because I thought I wanted to make a necklace out of some real titanium that came out of me, as a souvenir type thing.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  When Derica woke up from the operation, there was a little baggie under her pillow. And that little baggie was one very small part of a massive web of lies, deceit, and misplaced patient trust. It involved dozens and dozens of doctors, lawyers, and medical professionals all over Southern California, overlapping frauds and deceptions worth over $1 billion.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Now, you've seen the testimony here that out of the 23 pieces of metal that were implanted surgically into your back, that 12 of those were counterfeit. When was the first time you learned about that?

• 6:40Speaker 03

  In about March 2014.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Okay. And how did you learn of that?

• 6:48Speaker 03

  A letter in the mail that said, "You may have been a victim of counterfeit hardware."

• 6:56Speaker 01

  12 out of 23 pieces of hardware implanted in Derica Moses's body were fake. They were a ticking time bomb, because nobody knew how long they would last, what they were made of, and whether they were poisoning her from the inside out. And she was just one of hundreds of potential victims. I'm Benadere. From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, you're listening to Dr. Billions.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  This is episode one, Trust No One.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  In 2007, a guy named Mark Sirsancy was living in Southern Washington State, close to Portland. But he was California Dreamin'.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Well, originally, we were from, I'm from Southern California. We wanted to move back anyway, but it was just such a slim job opportunities at the time.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Through his wife's friend, he met a guy named Paul Randall, who was up from Orange County, California. Mark didn't think much of him at first.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  He's kind of a mousy kind of guy. I know this sounds horrible, but he just looked like a car salesman, like the ultimate used car salesman dude with the worst toupee I've ever seen in my life. I mean, he would look better if he just didn't have the toupee, because it was, half the time was even halfway on.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  But they kept talking, and Mark kind of caught on. There was something about this guy.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  What's that addict? You can sell ice to Eskimos? He can, he can sell ice to Eskimos all day long. He is just that dude.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Paul said he owned a medical company in the OC, very successful.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  Said it was a medical company, that he had multiple divisions of the medical company, which is DME, toxicology, implants, various things. He had a bunch of doctors that were working for him.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  And during their conversation, Paul kind of mentioned, hey, he was looking to hire. He asked Mark if he'd be open to relocate. Now, this was the heart of the Great Recession. Not a lot of opportunities floating around.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  He agreed to pay for all our moving expenses, housing in the meantime, until we found something and a very hefty salary.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  It might have seemed too good to be true, but like I said, there was something about this guy. Mark trusted him.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Mark looked the company up, but nothing. No online presence whatsoever.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  He did admit that he was antiquated. He didn't understand how to use email or websites. Because that's the first thing I called him out. I'm like, said, how do you not use email? How do you not use website? He was, well, this is why I want you. I want you to help me get it started. And I'm like, great.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Mark's a bit of a techie, so no website, no email, no problem.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  I was super excited because it sounded like I was going to launch him into a higher level of business and productivity. And it was exciting to see. So I was super excited.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  So what was the whole package? So you said that he was gonna move you down. You were gonna stay in a house that he owned.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  A home that he owned. He was gonna take care of all the moving expenses. And then he was gonna offer a pretty hefty salary. I don't remember off the top of my head, but it was like upwards of like 125, 150K a year.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. How did that compare to what you were making before?

• 10:18Speaker 04

  It was more, especially with the recession at that time, right?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  That house that Mark and his family would be moving into wasn't just any old shack. It was an eight-bedroom, 10-bathroom compound on an isolated Orange County hilltop, just in from the coast. We're talking mega, mega mansion, which was further proof to Mark that this guy knew what he was doing.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  On his first day, he walks into the medical offices near Long Beach, California. He's clean-shaven and excited.

• 10:49Speaker 04

  As I'm walking through, I hear just yelling, like people just arguing, like full-on, no-holds-barred verbal argument with multiple people.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Just like people shouting at each other.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess. And I didn't, it was, it was inaudible. I heard some things. I heard a lot of F-bombing and I heard a lot of like, you know, money and stuff like that. But I'm like, okay, someone's having a disagreement. And I just kept walking and I ended up finding out that's the office.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Inside is crazy. A bunch of people in the conference room and they're all screaming, including Paul Randall. Mark knocks on the door expecting a welcome, maybe some introduction to his new colleagues.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm like literally getting sweaty palms thinking about remembering it, but I had one girl said, who the hell are you? I'm like, so I was like, oh, I'm the new employee. I'm working here. And they're like, you are? And then they looked over at Paul like, what? They were like super confused. I literally sat and my heart sank and like, what am I doing? It just, there was zero professionalism.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  But you know, first day, maybe bad first impression? He was there for the marketing job. Let's get the website up. Let's get email. Let's learn the products, train the employees. That's what he was there for. He thought.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  Ended up going outside with Paul and Paul telling me that he, the first thing he needed me to do is he needed me to, how did he say this if I remember? Is essentially scare his employees into doing their job.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Mark is, how do I describe Mark? He's a giant, six foot four, 250 pounds. He's got confidence and swagger and definitely knows how to handle himself. He's a jujitsu master.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  I need you to go there and tell him that you're the, you know, the new manager and I want you to scare him and tell him that he has to do his job or I'm gonna fire him. And I said, well, I don't even know what he's doing. I don't even know what his job description is. I don't even know what my job description is.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  This did not sound like marketing.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  It was just a weird time, but he just wanted me to be his, his heavy, essentially is to scare people.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Okay, so hold on, hold on, hold on one second. So, so you drive up, first you go to the hospital, you realize that's not the right spot, then you kind of come around the side to this office building, get out of your car, you hear people arguing, you go in anyway, there's a huge argument happening in the conference room. And then that argument kind of ends. And then the next thing is you're meeting with Paul Randall and he's telling you he wants you to go threaten people? Is this right? Is this kind of like the timeline?

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, essentially, yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  And then like, like, like, when was lunch? Like, was all this before lunch?

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I think it was before lunch.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Over the next few days and weeks, things sort of settled down?

• 13:36Speaker 04

  I ended up creating an email for him. He was super skeptical, but I said, we need email. Everybody needs email. So I started creating email. I started developing websites. I started finding out what hit the product was, started calling vendors, just trying to glean as much as I can.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Mark had never worked in the medical field before, but you know, he'd been to the doctor. He's all, things here do not seem super legit.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  The thing that I found interesting is, is I can walk in the office and I can grab pieces of paper and start reading it. And I'm like, this is kind of shady because there's, this is a medical business. I'm sure there's patient's information. There were patient's addresses, there were social security numbers. There was a ton and I'm like looking at stacks of stuff.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Information in medicine is highly regulated. You might've heard of the HIPAA law. It carries big fines for violations of patient privacy, tens of thousands for a single violation. Mark did not know about that at the time. So several weeks in, he's still learning about the business. He's walking around and reading papers that just seem to be all over the place. He's checking Paul's email for him, making sure it's working and things are getting handled. And that's when things took a turn.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  The tipping point for me, if I recall, was I remember setting up, when I set up Paul's email, he received an email. A US attorney had written him and said, tick tock, tick tock. I remember the top of the email said, tick tock, tick tock. And I'm like, tick tock, tick tock.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  He clicked on the email and inside, a sealed grand jury indictment. The people of the United States of America versus his new boss, Paul Randall.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 15:47Speaker 05

  In 2002, Ryan Wedding was an Olympic snowboarder at the top of his game. Ryan's style is really gunned in gold. And in less than a minute, it slipped away. But he continued to chase the high. Ryan James Wedding. He controls one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in this world. I'm Michelle Shepherd and from CBC Podcasts and The Toronto Star, The Most Wanted Olympian. Available now.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Finding that indictment in his boss's email wasn't just one bad omen. It was one of many that Mark Soranski found at his new job with Paul Randall.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  There were so many red flags. It was just ridiculous. A lot of times checks bounced and he had a ton of money. He just didn't pay people. And I lost a lot of sleep because, you know, my wife at the time was saying, well, how are we gonna pay bills? Well, I had to go to work and try to get paid. I knew something was way off. And as time progressed and the more people I met, I'm like, you guys are the shadiest dudes ever. Like, these guys were super shady.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  It wasn't just his new boss. There was a whole cast of characters at the company. And as Mark got to know them.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  That's when it started really getting really weird.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  First, there was Paul's son, another slickster, like his dad.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  But he came up to me and he was the nicest one. And he shook my hand and he goes, hey, I just want to say thank you for helping my dad. And I said, I said, awesome. I said, no problem. I said, I really appreciate the opportunity. And he goes, you know, despite his background. And I go, what? And I'm, and I didn't know what he meant. And I didn't ask, I didn't push any further.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Then there was the sales team. One of the guys was named Mick McGrath, who, for the record, was never charged with any crimes for what Mark's about to tell us about.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  Um, that's the rock and roll guy. Cool guy from England, super cool accent, skinny as can be with the widest long hair down to his shoulder. I mean, he looked like he was right from spinal tap.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Mick had a problem and he thought, maybe Mark could help.

• 17:59Speaker 04

  He started complaining to me. I don't know why he opened up to me, but he did in the parking lot. And he was saying, you know, that Paul owes him, I don't know, several hundred thousand dollars, if not more.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Several hundred thousand dollars.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  And I said, well, how does he owe you money from? He owes me from these doctors that I brought in. And I'm like, what do you mean, these doctors that you brought in? And he goes, well, we do surgeries and every surgery that we do, we get, he pays, Paul pays us and that's our sales, it's our commission.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Sales commissions for surgeries? That didn't sound right. But he also thought Mick's gonna have to get in line.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  And in my mind, again, I didn't say anything, but I'm like, well, I gotta convince Paul to pay me for taking care of my family.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  After Mark found the indictment in Paul's email, those weird feelings, those red flags, he couldn't ignore them anymore. And he knew an indictment was a big deal, maybe the biggest deal. And he had to wonder, who else at this company was being looked at? Did he need to watch his own back?

• 19:00Speaker 04

  So I called the FBI. I called every law enforcement and no one would give me information, obviously. And no one would, I'm like, hey, listen, I'm new here. I'm like, just found this indictment, you know, I was transparent about it. And no one called me back, not one damn person called me back.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  One day, Mark was in Paul's office and something caught his eye. On Paul Randall's desk, there was a business card. Mark picked it up, looked at it.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  A card, a business card from Bill Reynolds, SIU insurance investigator.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Mark didn't know anything about medical insurance or investigators or how this guy might help him.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  I was just desperate for someone to glean information from, to get information from. I was desperate to find out where I stood. I was desperate to find out what the hell was going on. I was desperate to find out if I was just, you know, if I was wrong. I mean, I literally didn't know. I had no idea.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  He picked up the phone and he gave Bill Reynolds a call.

• 20:00Speaker 04

  So I, I reached out to him, he says, hey, let's meet.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  If you listened to my last podcast on the binge, Doctor's Orders, came out summer 2025. It was about an alleged mastermind of medical fraud named Dr. Munir Yoweda, then you might remember this voice.

• 20:19Speaker 06

  Well, my grandfather, he started with Oakland Police Department in 1893 and retired in 1948.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  This is the insurance investigator, Bill Reynolds, who also happens to be a fourth generation California cop. What the heck was Oakland like in 1893?

• 20:39Speaker 06

  It's pretty interesting because their forensics back then was putting a person against the wall and putting their arms extended and measuring them to say, you know, I guess this is a bad guy when your wingspan is greater than the average, I guess. And

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Bill was a rookie cop in Oakland in the early 1970s, which if you know anything about the civil rights movement and the Black Panthers, Oakland was a little hot in the early 70s. He moved from Oakland to other cities around Northern California. He fell in and out of love and eventually landed in South Lake Tahoe, California, a cute mountain town on the south end of a big, beautiful lake, right on the Nevada border. He fell in love again.

• 21:22Speaker 06

  I met her at Lake Tahoe.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  And then came one very fateful day in 1989. He was on a drug bust.

• 21:29Speaker 06

  I was dispatched to an apartment complex. The guy was overdosing, totally out of control, combative. When I walked up the second flight of stairs and I turned the corner, I was punched in the face and the fight was on.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  It was a big, drag-out fight.

• 21:49Speaker 06

  I shattered my shoulder and ripped my rotator cuff and impregnated my ulnar nerve in my elbow. So I ended up eight hours on the table for surgery.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Those injuries would have changed Bill's life a little bit, but there was something else that happened afterwards with his doctor, the one who operated on him. And that changed his life a lot. After the surgery, his 65-year-old doctor referred him to a very young, 21-year-old, newly-minted physical therapist. Bill thought, why her? Come to find out, that doctor was referring a lot of patients to this physical therapist. Bill asked around and was told they were having an affair.

• 22:33Speaker 06

  So I reported him to the medical board. And that's truly the first time that I got into a healthcare investigation. And, you know, he got his hands spanked. And so that was my first experience with physicians.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Bill started thinking all about that strange, trusting relationship we have with our doctors and how he'd been had. He couldn't let it go. He thought he was getting a legit referral, but it had nothing to do with his care, nothing to do with do no harm. The only thing it had to do with was the doctor's own self-interest. And if something like this was happening in small, beautiful South Lake Tahoe, who knows what doctors were doing everywhere else?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Bill needed a career shift.

• 23:23Speaker 06

  I knew I couldn't be kicking down doors and wrestling people and drunks on the side of the road anymore.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  So he started consulting for insurance companies.

• 23:31Speaker 06

  It became the power of the pen, doing investigations.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  First investigating car accidents and other types of claims, eventually moving into medical insurance, which is what he was doing when he got that call from Mark Sursancy.

• 23:46Speaker 07

  Shaq here. What's it like to buy a car from Carvana 100% online and get it delivered to your door? Let me tell you. Your car is here, Mr. Shaq. Thank you, Mr. Carvana guy. Can't wait to take it for a spin. Only the best for you, Mr. Shaq. Hey, have you always been so big, tall and handsome? Not always. I was 6'10" once. Seven days to love it or return it, Mr. Shaq. Not that I would. You never do. No, I never do. So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at carvana.com.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Before we go any further, I want to stop and say that being an insurance investigator might sound like a boring, nerdy desk job. And most of the time, it is. But Bill Reynolds was a cop. And so he brought a cop sensibility to this new job. That means real detective work, going undercover, recruiting spies, and working closely with federal, state, and local law enforcement. Before long, Bill was part of the special investigation unit at one of the largest insurance companies in the world. And from there, Bill got a very unique view on health insurance claims, a view that let him see the big picture.

• 25:30Speaker 06

  So when I got into the healthcare and I'm in Northern California, I found every other week I was down in Southern California.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Particularly in the LA and Orange County areas, doctors seemed to be finding new ways to overcharge, overbill, over everything. And it didn't really seem like anyone was paying much attention.

• 25:50Speaker 06

  You know, that's really the problem we have is that, you know, there's no accountability. A lot of doctors are very, very good. They're very honest, but there's a ruthless lot out there.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  By the mid 2000s, one particular hospital was popping up on Bill's computer screen over and over. It was called Pacific Hospital in Long Beach, California, and it was relatively new and pretty small. Yet the billings coming out of there were astronomical. So Bill started digging around, digging down names of doctors and administrators, building a kind of murder board with names and pictures. No yarn, but mapping out the webs of connections. If he had used yarn, a lot of it would have connected back to one guy, the owner of a small medical marketing company. Bill wasn't exactly sure what they did, but it seemed like they were doing a lot of something.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  The owner of the company was a wealthy toupee-wearing slickster named Paul Randall.

• 26:54Speaker 06

  And so I did a cold call and I asked Paul Randall to meet with me. And I took one of my supervisors from the company with me as a witness. And so both of us gave our business cards to Paul Randall.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Which is how Mark Sursancy found Bill Reynolds' phone number sitting on his boss's desk. Bill had just met him.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Mark called Bill sometime in late 2011, early 2012, and immediately Bill's thinking, opportunity, but also danger.

• 27:29Speaker 06

  Naturally, I immediately started running a background check on Mark to make sure I wasn't walking into something.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  They agreed to meet in Los Angeles at a fancy restaurant on Melrose Avenue.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  So I remember driving to LA off of Melrose at this really cool restaurant that had an atrium, ton of flowers and stuff.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Bill brought along another insurance investigator, Oliver Glover. We reached out to Oliver, but never heard back.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  They're in their ties and stuff like that. And they look like two FBI agents.

• 27:56Speaker 06

  We kind of postured back and forth.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  So I sat with them and started talking to them. And then we started playing that, I don't know if you want to say cat and mouse.

• 28:04Speaker 06

  We stayed there for probably a couple hours.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  But I already knew that they checked me out and stuff like that.

• 28:09Speaker 06

  I was able to run him through databases to check to see if he had a criminal history. I found that he didn't. I checked the civil courts and couldn't find anything on him.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  And I started talking to them and it got to the point where I said, I have a piece of paper, but I can't give it to you because I was nervous. If I gave it to them, then I would be culpable. And it said it was sealed, it was sealed indictment.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  The indictment Mark had found in Paul Randall's email was sealed by the court, meaning Mark could be committing a crime, not only by having it, well, technically stealing it, also by sharing it.

• 28:46Speaker 06

  I told him, I can't take this document. It's a governmental document.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Bill didn't take it, he didn't even touch it. But he did take a peek. Well, maybe a little more than a peek.

• 28:58Speaker 06

  I immediately called my attorney and told him what Mark had. And I told him, look, I didn't take copies. I didn't want my handprints on this. But I did read three or four critical pages. I didn't go through the whole background on the first, you know, dozen or so pages.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  The document outlined a scheme that Bill had only suspected was happening. Paul Randall, working as a quote-unquote marketer for Pacific Hospital of Long Beach and other hospitals, was involved in one of the biggest medical fraud operations in US history. The core of the fraud? Randall and others were incentivizing doctors to refer patients and their surgeries to specific places using specific medical equipment and specific providers. In return, Mark and Bill say Randall was giving doctors money, free vacations, sports memorabilia, gold coins, sometimes other things. And did I mention money? Lots and lots of money.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  You might call these referral fees. The feds call them kickbacks. And when they happen, you can't be sure of anything. A referral by an elderly doctor to a young, hot, physical therapist is one thing. What about X-rays and MRIs? Are they needed? Prescriptions for opiates and other addictive drugs? Warranted? Medical implants? Are they the right ones? Surgeries? Are they actually necessary? Or just a way for a doctor and a hospital to get rich? These doctors from all over Southern California were exploiting that most basic bond of patient-doctor trust

• 30:44Speaker 01

  to enrich themselves, to the tune of over $1 billion. What Bill suspected was that Paul Randall was a piece of it, maybe a big piece of it, but he was not the guy at the top.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  And that's when Bill broke the news to Mark. This was not the first time his boss had been indicted. Paul Randall was a serial fraudster, a felon. And now he was being investigated for a whole new fraud.

• 31:16Speaker 04

  So it was super stressful, super, super stressful. Bill told me that he was connected, and he was. He was connected to some pretty shady people. I wasn't afraid of them. I was just more afraid of my family being there.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  And that's when Bill made Mark an offer that would change his life forever.

• 31:32Speaker 04

  And they said, hey, do you want to stay on board and get more information?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Bill asked Mark to be his mole in Randall's organization. Stay on the inside, feed him documents and information, and start to build a case that would eventually ensnared dozens of doctors, lawyers, and medical professionals all over Southern California. For Mark, the decision wasn't hard. As a mole, he could keep earning a six-figure salary and also, for a while at least, sleep slightly better at night.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  So I ended up staying and all hell broke loose from there.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Coming up this season on Dr. Billions.

• 32:17Speaker 06

  Los Angeles is the training ground for all fraud in the United States. It originates in LA.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  I got five or six female FBI agents, wired them up for recording devices, and just sat back and let these doctors and attorneys talk about how much money they made doing all these bad things.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  I'm looking at the surgery board for tomorrow going, these people are fucked.

• 32:44Speaker 06

  The patient is an ATM card. How much can I bill this guy for?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  We alleged that the billing was well over a billion dollars. What was happening was wrong, and no one's fucking doing anything about it. I'm disgusted that I ever even shook these people's hands.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Unlock all episodes of Dr. Billions ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. And it doesn't stop at Dr. Billions. Subscribers get a binge drop of a brand-new series on the first of every month. That's all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. And between drops, you've got ad-free access to Crime Scene, the Binge's weekly series, plus instant access to over 70 true crime podcasts, shows like Doctor's Orders, Night Shift, and Firebug. So you'll never be short on stories. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe. If you're not on Apple, head to getthebinge.com to subscribe directly.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Dr. Billions is produced by Western Sound for Sony Music Entertainment's The Binge. I'm your host, Ben Adair. I'm also the executive producer for Western Sound. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis. Dr. Billions was reported and produced by Dana Balut. It was written by Dana Balut and Ben Adair. On this episode, Leila Das is our fact checker. Michael Rayfield is the mix engineer. Music courtesy of North Figaroa Studios. Legal by Sam Borenzweig at Clarus Law, P L L C. Next up, episode two, Growing a Spine.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.