A ruling by the Court of Appeals (CA) has turned down a suit  for the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus filed by a Filipino doctor facing a $3 million grand theft and health care fraud in the United States.
In a four-page decision  by Associate Justice Amelita Tolentino, the appellate court’s Fourth Division declared that the petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Dr. Eric Uy Chan through his lawyer Allan Paguia “for being patently without basis.’Two Associate Justices Ramon Garcia and Danton Bueser concurred.
Chan,48  is wanted by US authorities for conspiracy to commit a crime, grand theft and health care fraud for presenting false medical claims and collecting payments amounting to more than $3 million from the California Medi-Cal Program.
Two state courts in California separately issued warrants for his arrest in January 2000 and February 2003 following the filing of a complaint in 1996 accusing Chan and two others of operating the Green Cross Medical Clinic in Carson City, California, without a license or a medical service provider number.
Uy is detained at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) after his arrest  last February on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the Regional Trial Court of Manila City Branch 1on Aug. 28, 2006.
Chan is wanted to stand trial in the Superior Court of the State of California for the Country of Los Angeles on fraud and theft charges.
After the US government learned that Chan   entered and has residential address in the country, a petition for extradition was filed by the Department of Justice, representing the US government, against him.
In filing the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the doctor argued that the extradition treaty between the Philippines and the United States of America is unconstitutional because it was not ratified by a two-thirds vote of all the members of the Senate.
“It is well to note, that a treaty, or an extradition treaty for that matter, just like laws or international or executive agreement, are considered valid and unconstitutional until declared otherwise by a final decision of the court. Until then, the courts are duty bound to enforce them,” the CA said.
Chan defrauded the US government by securing payments from the state’s Department of Health Services through its Medi-Cal program through the provider number of a licensed doctor they had hired, submitting claims for services not actually provided by the doctor amounting to $517,000.
When the doctor deactivated her provider number, Chan and his cohorts allegedly opened another clinic, Evergreen Medical Clinic, in the same city in March 1997.
They hired another doctor, whose provider number they again allegedly used to make fraudulent claims of $1.7 million.
Chan put up West Coast Intermed Management  using the said scheme and managed to defraud the US government anew in the total amount of $900,000. When the fraud was discovered in 1999, charges were filed against Chan and his co-accused.