Five Additional Mail Fraud Counts Filed Against Namihas

LOS ANGELES — A federal grand jury has issued a new indictment against ex-Tustin gynecologist Ivan C. Namihas, charging him with five additional counts of mail fraud.

The new indictment means that Namihas will face 15 counts of mail fraud at his retrial, which is scheduled for May, 1996. Namihas’ first trial ended last March in a hung jury with jurors split 10 to 2 in favor of conviction.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Jonathan Shapiro said Wednesday that Namihas is now accused of duping nine patients--including two additional women and a man who surfaced after the first trial--into believing that they had deadly diseases such as cancer and AIDS, and then using the mail to bill them and their insurance companies for unnecessary laser surgery.

Namihas, 68, has denied the allegations and maintained that he never purposefully misdiagnosed illnesses or gave inappropriate treatments to patients.

Namihas’ lawyer, Paul S. Meyer, said Wednesday his client plans “to strongly contest the charges.”

“I don’t think that the addition of the new charges is going to be meaningful,” Meyer said. “The prosecution was unable to get a conviction on [the previous indictment], and it’s going to be even more difficult to get a conviction on these new counts.”

The California Medical Board revoked the physician’s license in 1992 after more than 160 former patients complained that he had sexually abused them.

But prosecutors did not press sexual assault charges against him, saying the statute of limitations had expired in most of the cases and that they lacked corroborating evidence. Namihas has also denied those allegations.