Three Providers, Three Red Flags

Three names. Three billing patterns. Three sets of questions that don't have easy answers.

A nurse practitioner in Torrance, California who billed Medicare $12.1M for COVID tests in a single year — 990 times the specialty median. A Beverly Hills plastic surgeon whose Medicare billing is dominated by wound care, totaling $28.9M over a decade. An anti-aging spa doctor in New Jersey who went from $235.4K to $5.7M in a single year — a 24x explosion.

These three providers were flagged by our statistical analysis of CMS Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data spanning 2014–2023. Each sits atop our risk-scored watchlist, scoring 96, 92, and 88 out of 100 respectively. Each exhibits billing volumes or patterns that fall far outside the statistical norms for their specialties.

What follows is what the public data shows. You can verify every number yourself.

Provider 1: Merry Taheri

A nurse practitioner billed Medicare $12.1M in COVID tests — 990x the specialty median

Yearly Billing History

Merry Taheri is listed as a nurse practitioner in Torrance, California. In 2023 alone, her NPI billed Medicare $12.1M for 1.0M services. That's 4.1K services per working day — or roughly 517 per hour for an 8-hour shift.

100% of her billing is through COVID test codes, primarily K1034. Her code concentration score is 1.0 — the mathematical maximum — meaning virtually every dollar came from one type of service. Her specialty z-score of 23.06 means she billed 23 standard deviations above the nurse practitioner median. In statistics, anything above 3 standard deviations is considered extreme. She is at 23.

Public Context

Publicly available information shows Taheri is running for the California State Assembly, District 69, with a campaign website at merrytaheri4assembly.com. She describes herself as "Dr. Merry Taheri" — she holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), not a medical degree. Her campaign bio describes "24+ years as nurse/nurse practitioner in multiple Emergency Departments" and states she was on "the front lines" during COVID.

Provider 2: Som Kohanzadeh

A Beverly Hills plastic surgeon billing Medicare $28.9M — 90.3% from wound care

Yearly Billing History

The billing trajectory tells the story. From $19.1K in 2014 to $14.7M in 2023 — a 770x increase over a decade. But the real acceleration began in 2020, when billing jumped from $662.3K to $2.6M — and then kept climbing to $14.7M by 2023.

Despite being credentialed as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, 90.3% of Kohanzadeh's Medicare billing is wound care — primarily skin substitute products. His top codes include Q4158 (Kerecis fish skin graft), Q4196 (PuraPly antimicrobial wound matrix), Q4205 (membrane graft), G0277 (hyperbaric oxygen therapy), and 11043 (debridement of muscle/bone).

Public Context

Kohanzadeh's practice website at drsom.com markets him as a "Board-Certified Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon" offering facelifts, breast augmentation, liposuction, and other cosmetic procedures. He is also described as co-founder of the "Wound Institutes of America, specializing in wound care and healing."

This matters because wound care — specifically skin substitute products — is the Department of Justice's #1 fraud enforcement target. In June 2025, the DOJ announced a $14.6B healthcare fraud takedown with wound care at the center. In September 2025, the HHS Office of Inspector General specifically called skin substitutes "particularly vulnerable to fraud."

Provider 3: Tatiana Sharahy

An anti-aging spa doctor billing Medicare $8.0M with COVID tests dominating 2023

Yearly Billing History

The pattern is unmistakable. For nine years, Sharahy's billing was modest: between $138.1K and $356.1K per year, with roughly 1,600 to 9,200 services annually. Then in 2023: $5.7M from 471.0K services — a 24x increase over the prior year.

96.7% of that 2023 billing was COVID tests. Her services-per-day metric of 1.9K means her NPI was billing for roughly 236 services per hour in an 8-hour day. And her beneficiary count jumped from 26 in 2022 to 29,872 in 2023 (per our aggregated fraud features data) — a pattern consistent with mass-distribution COVID test billing.

Public Context

Sharahy is listed as Medical Director at XBody Health, Wellness & Spa in Wayne, New Jersey — described as an "anti-aging medical center that applies futuristic, fully functional approaches to health and wellness." Her practice specializes in anti-aging medicine, MINT threads, carboxytherapy, and peptide treatments. She was recognized with "Top Doctor awards in 2019 for Top Internal and Integrative Medicine Practitioner and Top Aesthetic Medicine Practitioner."

She also bills for an unusual range of diagnostic services: 76942 (ultrasonic guidance for needle placement), 20553 (trigger point injections), 95816 (EEG), and 95886 (nerve conduction studies). This diverse code mix, combined with the COVID test explosion, creates an unusual profile.

What These Patterns Have in Common

All three providers share key characteristics:

1. Extreme statistical outliers. All three have specialty z-scores above 22 — meaning they're more than 22 standard deviations above their peer median. For context, a z-score of 3 is already considered extreme in any field.
2. Sudden billing explosions. None of these patterns built gradually. They all show sharp, dramatic increases in billing — the kind of hockey-stick growth that raises eyebrows.
3. Billing in fraud-vulnerable categories. Two are dominated by COVID test billing. One is dominated by wound care. Both categories are explicitly identified by the HHS Office of Inspector General as areas "particularly vulnerable to fraud."
4. Practice profiles that don't match billing profiles. A nurse practitioner running for office. A cosmetic surgeon billing wound care. An anti-aging spa doctor distributing thousands of COVID tests per day.

What Happens Next

Statistical flags alone don't result in enforcement actions. The typical path from data anomaly to investigation works like this:

1. CMS data analysis identifies statistical outliers (what we've done here, using public data)
2. HHS-OIG or DOJ investigates, often using non-public claims data, patient interviews, and medical records review
3. If evidence supports fraud, civil or criminal charges may be filed under the False Claims Act or federal healthcare fraud statutes
4. The False Claims Act provides for treble damages (3x the amount of false claims) plus penalties per claim
5. Whistleblowers who report fraud can receive 15–30% of recovered funds under the qui tam provisions