Nvidia's headquarters. Credit: Nvidia
Prosecutors in Santa Clara County, California, have accused Faranak Firozan, a former fraud prevention manager at NVIDIA, of submitting 167 fraudulent claims to NVIDIA's self-insured health plan administered by Cigna.
A state court in San Jose, California, has scheduled a July 15 arraignment hearing for Fizoran on a list of charges that includes altering medical records with fraudulent intent and preparing false statements in connection with insurance claims, officials said Friday.
Recommended For You
"If convicted, she could face years in prison and would be ordered to pay any outstanding restitution," officials said.
California investigations began looking into Fizoran after Cigna, the administrator for the NVIDIA health plan, told the California Department of Insurance that it had concerns about her claims.
At press time, it was not clear whether Firozan had an attorney. She could not immediately be reached for comment.
NVIDIA: NVIDIA is a Santa Clara, California-based company that's famous for making high-end graphics processing units and technology used in artificial intelligence systems. It has about 36,000 employees.
Fizoran: Fizoran earned a bachelor's degree in software engineering from Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran in 2001 and a master's degree in business from Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, in 2016, according to a RocketReach entry.
A SignalHire entry shows that she has been working in the United States as a software development consultant since 2008.
From 2010 through 2017, she worked as an anti-money laundering investigator at two large banks, Union Bank and First Republic. From 2017 through 2020, she was a threat response security incident manager at Uber.
She worked for NVIDIA as a senior technical program manager from 2020 through December 2024.
The investigation: Cigna began watching Fizoran's claims closely in October 2023, after it received a large number of claims from her in one month, officials said.
In some cases, officials said, Firozan altered service dates to create duplicated versions of real claims, and in other cases she fabricated entire documents.
Related: Elevance sues medical services firms over 'fraudulent' out-of-network care billing
After Cigna asked the California Department of Insurance for help, investigators obtained more information through subpoenas, provider interviews and bank records, officials said.
In the past, some criminals have tried to harass investigators by making investigators look like criminals.
The Santa Clara County officials have not yet talked about why they believe that Fizoran created the fraudulent claims herself and was not made to look like a criminal by cyber attackers.
© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
