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California Officials Raid Offices of Major Obama Donor Kareem Ahmed

AP
October 10, 2013

The Orange County District Attorney's Office this week raided the offices of a major financier to President Barack Obama's reelection campaign as part of an unknown investigation, according to TPM.

Officials executed a warrant for the offices of Landmark Medical Management, whose president Kareem Ahmed gave the Obama affiliated Super PAC Priorities USA a $1 million donation. The president of a company in a complex industry, Ahmed claimed Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a personal friend, TPM reports:

Officials with the district attorney's office on Tuesday morning executed a search warrant at Landmark's office in Ontario, Calif., according to a source who works at Landmark and was present during the raid. The exact nature of the district attorney's investigation is unclear. [...]

But while Ahmed was and remains mostly unknown to the wider public, a TPM investigation last year found that both Ahmed and Landmark were familiar to people involved in California's workers' compensation system. People who know the industry and officials in the state told TPM that Landmark was one of several companies that had made millions of dollars in recent years by navigating a tricky corner of the state's workers' compensation system. Ahmed was an advocate of "compound drugs" -- drugs whose ingredients have been combined, mixed, or altered by a pharmacist -- and Landmark made money by buying accounts receivable from medical providers who prescribed compounded topical pain creams. In California, drug compounding was known as a physician profit center in the workers' compensation system, and state lawmakers made a push in 2011 to remove some of the financial incentives associated with compound drugs in the system.

Ahmed has also given to the Democratic National Committee, and senators such as Bill Nelson (D., Fla.) and Bob Casey (D., Pa.).