Government Poised to Seize Fairfax House in Insurance Fraud Case

Dr. Mert Kivanc may have left the country in 2007 before he could be tried for committing insurance fraud, but that's not keeping the federal government from seizing his former Fairfax City home and almost $30,000 in a bank account that Kivanc transferred to his parents.

Last week, a federal jury in Alexandria determined that Kivanc's parents were not "innocent" owners of the property, at 4219 University Dr. in Fairfax, even though he had signed the deed over to them in May 2007 before he left for his native Turkey.

Kivanc has been charged with health care fraud and conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the Justice Department's Eastern District of Virginia, said Kivanc could face up to 20 years in prison for each charge, if convicted. 

Between November 2005 and November 2007, the government alleges Kivanc defrauded health care companies by overbilling for treatments that patients at his Falls Church medical practice were not receiving. Specifically, the practice only ordered about 30 percent of the Remicade, an expensive injection used to treat auto-immune disease, that it billed health care providers for during that period.

As a result, the government contends Kivanc fraudently collected more than $1.1 million, a portion of which he then used to renovate his Fairfax City home.

Carr said Kivanc has not been extradited from Turkey to face these charges, and the investigation against him is ongoing.