Double Eyelid Surgery as Athlete's Foot Treatment? ... Insurance Fraud Ring Exposed

A group of plastic surgeons who issued false medical fee receipts by claiming cosmetic procedures as onychomycosis laser treatments, along with patients who received insurance payouts using these false receipts, were caught by the police.

The Busan Metropolitan Police Agency's Violent Crime Investigation Unit announced on the 23rd that they have sent to prosecution without detention plastic surgery clinic director A and five brokers, along with 84 patients from the Busan area, on charges of insurance fraud.

According to the police, A, who operates a plastic surgery specialist clinic in Busan, is suspected of paying referral fees to brokers and recruiting plastic surgery patients from April 18, 2020, to the end of December 2022, performing cosmetic procedures but issuing false medical fee receipts as if onychomycosis laser treatments had been performed.

A is known to have created a total of 1,993 false medical records, claiming that patients with actual expense insurance had received onychomycosis laser treatments 10 to 20 times up to the maximum outpatient expense limit (100,000 to 300,000 KRW) per visit.

They exploited the fact that, unlike plastic surgery, onychomycosis laser treatment is covered by medical insurance. The actual procedures patients received varied, including double eyelid surgery and lower eyelid fat removal.

A total of 84 patients participated in the crime, submitting false medical records to private insurance companies and receiving insurance payouts worth about 2 million KRW per person, totaling 200 million KRW. A also gained profits of a similar scale.

A police official stated, “The method has evolved from disguising plastic surgery as physical therapy to various disease treatments such as onychomycosis laser, so we will focus on blocking new types of insurance fraud crimes,” and added, “Patients should be cautious as receiving insurance payouts based on documents or amounts that differ from actual medical treatment may implicate them in insurance fraud.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.