Nathan and David Young presented their drug and sober care facilities as an attractive option for those in need.
Come to Southern California and we can help you with your addiction, they’d say. And your insurance company will cover the bills.
But now, the father-and-son team are accused by federal prosecutors of using their facilities to commit a shocking fraud.
They are accused in federal criminal complaints of drugging patients, preventing them from accessing their belongings and holding them against their will.
The Youngs are accused of directing “body brokers” across the country to target vulnerable populations, including those who were unhoused, in poverty and attending substance abuse support groups. The pair then had the people sent to their facilities, one of which was Rodeo Recovery in Beverly Hills, according to criminal complaints from the Department of Justice.
The charges were a central part of a wider healthcare fraud crackdown by the Trump administration that netted more than a dozen arrests in multiple states.
They also bring renewed attention to Southern California’s reputationas a so-called rehab riviera, where scores of facilities dot the landscape at varying price tags. Investigations are underway after Cindy Crawford’s son, Presley Gerber, was found dead last month at a luxury sober living home in Santa Monica.
The Youngs and the other defendants could not be reached for comment. They have not yet entered pleas in response to the charges. Authorities took a total of eight people into custody Thursday, and charged 15 defendants, including six medical professionals.
The lawyers allege the pair were held in federal custody while the government “furiously drafted a charging document and arrest warrant on complaint to justify what it had done.” The Youngs each posted $4 million bail and agreed to home detention and surrendered their passports pending a Nov. 5 hearing.
Reuven Cohen, Nathan Young’s attorney, stated his client denies the allegations and looks forward to challenging the government’s case in court.
In a court filing last week to get the Youngs released, Cohen wrote, “Nathan Young has shown this court exactly who he is. … He knew he was under investigation, offered to surrender his passport and post bond, and never fled. When the agents [arrived] at the doorstep, he and his father submitted without incident. The Youngs are family men with deep roots here, and they have every reason to stay and defend themselves.”
Prosecutors alleged that between 2020 and 2026, the Youngs billed more than $1.6 billion in claims to major health insurers and were paid more than $210 million, including billings for “non-existent and woefully inadequate ‘therapy’ sessions,” the criminal complaint says.
Prosecutors also alleged that the Youngs sought out individuals whose insurance policies provided the most generous reimbursements, and often fraudulently enrolled individuals in new insurance policies for which they were not eligible, to ensure that they obtained the highest reimbursement.
Prospective patients were lured to Southern California with free flights, money, apartments, hotel stays, cars, gift cards, marijuana, cigarettes, controlled substances (including illegal drugs), and other prescription medications freely dispensed by doctors employed by the Youngs, prosecutors allege in court filings.
Once in California, however, most patients found that the promises were fake, according to an FBI agent affidavit. Some “premium” patients with high-reimbursing insurance policies received luxury stays in hotels and private apartments, and dinners, among other inducements, whereas the “non-premium” patients lived in cramped, unsanitary, crowded and often derelict housing described as “trap houses.”
The father and son are accused of recycling patients through their facilities to continue billing insurance companies, regardless of whether treatment was medically necessary or actually provided. To keep patients cycling through their facilities, the Youngs are accused of directing that patients be drugged with medication — “to knock the client out” — if they tried to leave. The charges allege that the Youngs and the other conspirators would change people’s insurance coverage to keep the scam going.
The Youngs and their accomplices are also accused of offering drugs to patients and cutting them off from communication with family members. According to an affidavit, when Nathan Young was informed that a “premium patient” wanted to leave detox so he could smoke weed, he instructed that the patient should be given what he wanted, off-site from the detox, to keep him at the facility.
Prosecutors allege that the conspirators instructed employees to coach patients to fabricate symptoms so they would be eligible for detoxification services, and that patients were encouraged to use drugs or alcohol to become eligible for treatment.
According to the criminal complaint, the substance abuse therapy, however, “consisted of Zoom sessions with more than one hundred attendees that patients did not have to participate in except to turn on their cameras. Patients were told that they could ‘lay out on [the] beach’ without having to participate in therapy that was subsequently billed to insurance companies,” according to the charges.
In text exchanges, Nathan Young allegedly made medical decisions based on insurance payouts, prosecutors said. When a broker proposed putting a United Healthcare insured patient in Rodeo Recovery’s high-end detox program, he wrote, “The United girl has decided to come in.”
“Ok, I think it’s a bad policy but sure,” Nathan Young responded, according to prosecutors. “An Alaska would be 20 times better….”
The FBI agent affidavit said that about a week later, a client with better “Alaska”-type insurance came along, and “United” was booted. “Yes I was moving the (expletive) United back to sober living,” the broker texted Nathan Young.
“Our message is simple: If you steal healthcare dollars from the American taxpayer or abuse your position to harm patients, we are coming for you — and the data will lead us to wherever you are,” said Assistant Atty. Gen. Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division.
In announcing the charges and other cases Thursday, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli for the Central District of California said “every dollar drained out of our private and public health insurance systems is one less dollar available to those who truly need it.”
“Healthcare fraud cheats American taxpayers and healthcare programs out of billions of dollars,” added Patrick Grandy, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.
Attorneys for the defendants said David Young, 71, was taken into custody Oct. 13 at 6 a.m., when “more than a dozen agents pounded on the door of David’s home, screaming repeatedly” his name and saying they had a warrant.
“Within the hour, the government induced Nathan Young’s surrender by representing to his counsel … that agents were ‘waiting for him’ in the lobby of his apartment building — implying there was an arrest authority to which he must submit. There was none,” the Youngs’ attorneys wrote.
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