Ex-prosecutor aids feds by chasing fraud for WellPoint.

As recently appointed vice president of fraud and abuse at WellPoint Health Networks Inc., Lee Arian will be investigating health insurance scams, helping build civil cases for WellPoint's lawyers and handing over detailed evidence to prosecutors in criminal investigations.

"Like anywhere else, the federal government has only so many resources, so they are not going to take a $2,000 case," Arian said. "But if we do our job here properly, we make it appropriate for them. We do a lot of the work for them."

An estimated $85 billion was lost to health care fraud nationwide in 2003, according to the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, of which WellPoint is a member. That's 5 percent of the $1.7 trillion U.S. residents spent on health care during the year.

"The cost of fraud is built into the premiums," Arian said. "It's a significant component of the double-digit health care inflation."

Arian, 41, was born in Los Angeles and attended Georgetown University, where he received a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1985. He got his law degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1988.

After working at a law firm in Los Angeles, Arian joined the U.S. Attorney's Office in 1991. For the last eight years, he worked as the health care coordinator in the criminal division's public corruption and government fraud section.

At WellPoint, a managed health care company that reported 15 million medical members and 45.6 million specialty members in 2003, Arian will work with former FBI agents to investigate many of the same scams he pursued as a U.S. Attorney, such as people stealing a doctor's identity and billing insurers for imaginary services, or so-called rent-a-patient schemes.

Arian lives in the San Fernando Valley with his wife and two daughters.