A prominent Valley doctor was hailed as a “health care hero” during the pandemic, but now his companies are in bankruptcy and the Department of Justice is accusing them of unnecessarily admitting patients to a Scottsdale hospital and submitting false billing claims to Medicare.

Dr. Nima Ghadimi founded Scottsdale Physicians Group, as well as SPG Hospice and United Telehealth. Court documents show the doctor, or his family’s trust, owned 100% of all three companies.

From the outside, Ghadimi and his companies were doing well. They were featured in articles and TV interviews. He was was one of the Phoenix Business Journal's Health Care Heroes finalists. The main hospitalist group, SPG, won a contract to work inside HonorHealth’s Shea Medical Center.

But behind the scenes, the companies were insolvent as early as December 2016, according to the bankruptcy trustee currently running the businesses.

The trustee also wrote in court filings that, in the years that followed, Ghadimi fraudulently transferred millions from the companies to his personal accounts.

In that same timeframe, real estate records show Ghadimi owned an estimated $7 million mansion in California and a $3 million home in Scottsdale.

The claims

There are currently 18 financial claims filed against SPG and the other companies in the bankruptcy court.

The claims include a doctor seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars, an Arizona bank claiming it is owed more than $5 million, and Cox Communications looking to...

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