Following eight years of litigation, an Orange County Superior Court judge threw out a major insurance fraud case that also alleged involuntary manslaughter stemming from an infant’s death.

All charges of involuntary manslaughter and felony insurance fraud-related counts were dismissed against Kareem Ahmed, Andrew Robert Jarminski and Michael Rudolph, according to court records.

The case was first filed in 2014 and has had several legal setbacks over the years, most recently in 2019 when Orange County Superior Court Judge Sheila Hanson ruled that prosecutors violated attorney-client privilege.

Since that ruling, the attorneys have been working through what evidence was not tainted and could still be used in the case.

“We’re grateful for the attention that Judge Hanson gave to the issue, and, obviously, we’re pleased with the outcome,” Ahmed’s attorney, Benjamin Gluck, told City News Service.

“Apart from the procedural errors in this case, on the underlying issues we contend Mr. Ahmed never did anything wrong.”

In 2019, Hanson found that Deputy District Attorney Shaddi Kamiabipour did not intend to invade the attorney-client privilege, but District Attorney Investigator Fred Nichols was recused.

Kamiabipour did not immediately respond to messages.

The case has had multiple issues along the way.

In March 2016, the Fourth District Court of Appeal mostly dismantled an indictment against multiple physicians, pharmacists and other medical professionals involved in what prosecutors alleged was a kickback scheme.

The justices at that time did not comment on the merits of the case, but noted multiple technical errors.

Instead of returning to a grand jury to seek new indictments, prosecutors filed new cases instead. Because of that prosecutors do not have the opportunity to refile the case anymore, Gluck said.

Ahmed, who was a major booster of then-President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, was accused of masterminding the scheme, which prosecutors said resulted in more than $200 million in losses.

Prosecutors accused Ahmed of orchestrating a scheme to create a pain-relief cream and offer kickbacks to physicians and chiropractors to dispense it while also defrauding insurance companies with workers’ compensation claims.

Priscilla Lujan, a patient prescribed the cream, sued Jarminski in Los Angeles County in 2013 alleging the cream came without standard warnings, which led her to expose the ointment to her 5-month-old son, who died after ingesting it while she used her fingers as a pacifier, Lujan’s attorney, Shawn McCann, said.

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