The View co-host Sunny Hostin’s surgeon husband Emmanuel accused of insurance fraud in bombshell lawsuit

The longtime husband of The View co-host Sunny Hostin is starting the new year under a cloud after being charged with federal insurance fraud.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Hostin is among nearly 200 defendants named in one of the largest RICO cases ever filed in New York.

He and many of the others are accused or facing kickbacks by conducting operations and fraudulently billing a company that insures taxi companies and Uber and Lyft drivers.

“Hostin knowingly provided fraudulent medical and other health care services, including arthroscopic surgeries,” the lawsuit, filed Dec. 17, alleges.

The insurance company American Transit was then billed ‘in exchange for kickbacks and/or other compensation disguised as dividends or other cash distributions.’

Hostin’s lawyer Daniel Thwaites told DailyMail.com that his client ‘denies every allegation’ and called the trial a ‘blanket, sprawling, worthless lawsuit by an almost bankrupt insurance company’.

“It is intended to intimidate and harass physicians from collecting for care provided to American Transit insureds and their passengers,” Thwaites said.

He said Hostin has an ‘impeccable’ record, adding: ‘American Transit has rushed into the lawsuit without ever conducting an investigation of Dr. Hostin or raise concerns with his lawyers.

“The real story here is about an insurance company abusing the legal system to restrict and limit health care benefits to its policyholders and their passengers and write off its proper obligations,” Thwaites said.

Sunny Hostin, 56, has been married to the doctor for almost a quarter of a century. They tied the knot in 1998 and have two children and live in a 10-bed, 10-bath palatial estate in Purchase, New York.

They met at a church in Maryland, where he graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1996.

Sunny, an attorney and former prosecutor, is a senior legal correspondent and analyst for ABC News as well as co-host of The View.

She’s no stranger to talking about her marriage on The View. Back in February, co-host Whoopi branded her a ‘b****’ when Hostin openly bashed her husband’s cooking.

She has also shared painful experiences, including about her struggles with infertility before she and her husband welcomed their children, a 22-year-old son and an 18-year-old daughter.

In January 2021, she revealed the tragic news that her husband’s parents, both doctors, had died of COVID over the holiday break.

In the case filed in federal court in Brooklyn, Dr. Hostin, 54, named as the owner of Hostin Orthopaedics, which works out of an eighth-floor office on Lexington Avenue near Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

American Transit claims that ‘rampant’ insurance fraud is endemic in New York State thanks to its ‘No-Fault Law’, which requires insurers to pay up to $50,000 in medical expenses for people injured in traffic accidents.

“These significant potential no-fault recoveries can encourage ill-intentioned carriers to overdiagnose, overtreat and overbill to get the most money back for themselves,” American Transit said in a statement.

The law was enacted in 1974 ‘in the wake of rapidly rising auto insurance costs and when accident victims experienced long delays in compensation,’ American Transit says in the suit.

But taxis and rideshares now have to pay up to $200,000 – four times the cover for private drivers.

“This has put a target on the back of livery vehicles and the insurers that insure them for an unsavory person looking to take advantage of payouts after claims.”

“Overall, abusers of the No-Fault Law have collected hundreds of millions in fraudulent payments, destabilized the livery insurance market in New York City, increased premiums for hard-working taxi and livery drivers, and harmed the public.”

American Transit is seeking more than $450 million in damages in the suit.

The insurance company alleges that Hostin was given an ‘investment’ interest in Empire State Ambulatory Surgery Center in exchange for referring a ‘steady stream’ of patients.

“Empire State ASC issued regular payments to or for the benefit of Hostin that were, in effect, illegal kickbacks for referrals,” the court papers allege.

As examples, insurer Hostin – which is affiliated with several top New York hospitals, including Mount Sinai and Lenox Hill – claims it saw two patients in January 2023 who were involved in ‘low-impact’ collisions that should have caused ‘no more than mild ‘. tissue damage’.

But in both cases, Hostin is said to have performed arthroscopic surgery within two months without seeing whether the patients would have recovered through more conservative treatment.

William Natbony, a lawyer for American Transit, told DailyMail.com: ‘No-fail fraud is a big problem in New York.

‘American Transit filed suit as part of its statutory responsibility to combat such fraud.

But Steven Harfenist, an attorney who has represented defendants in similar cases, told Law.com that the lawsuit ‘looks like a Hail Mary’ from American Transit.

He called it a desperate attempt to ‘wipe out large swaths of receivables’ by targeting smaller practices that could settle because they can’t afford litigation.