CRMC Lawsuit: Federal Indictment and Perwaiz Patient Claims

The lawsuit against Chesapeake Regional Medical Center is a civil action brought in Chesapeake Circuit Court by more than 900 former patients of Dr. Javaid Perwaiz, each seeking $10 million in damages for surgeries they say the hospital allowed him to perform despite knowing for decades that he was operating on women who did not need it. A separate federal criminal case, filed in January 2025, charges the hospital itself with healthcare fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Both cases remain active in 2026.

Who Is Suing and What They Are Claiming

Attorneys Victoria Wickman and Anthony DiPietro filed the civil complaint in late 2025 on behalf of more than 500 women. The plaintiff group has grown quickly. By January 2026 it exceeded 600 women seeking a combined $6 billion. By March 2026 the count reached 907 after a single filing added 123 new plaintiffs. Each plaintiff seeks $10 million, and the complaint has been amended at least five times.¹²

The complaint names the hospital along with five current and former presidents whose tenures together span Perwaiz’s entire time at CRMC: Donald Buckley (1978–2005), Christopher Mosley (2005–2010), Wynn Dixon (2010–2013), Peter Bastone (2013–2016), and Reese Jackson (2016–2026).³

The complaint lays out four counts: negligent hiring and retention; negligence combined with gross negligence and reckless disregard; vicarious liability; and wanton and willful disregard. The plaintiffs also seek pre-judgment interest and attorney fees.⁴ The central allegation is that hospital leadership let Perwaiz keep his privileges for financial reasons despite warnings from other medical professionals stretching back to the late 1990s.⁵

What the Hospital Is Accused of Ignoring

Both the civil plaintiffs and federal prosecutors point to a pattern that began before Perwaiz ever operated at Chesapeake Regional. In 1983, while his application for privileges was pending, the hospital’s president was told by Maryview Hospital that Perwaiz’s privileges there had been terminated for performing unnecessary gynecological surgeries, including irreversible hysterectomies. Chesapeake Regional’s own surgery department initially deemed him “unacceptable.” The hospital granted him privileges in 1984.⁶

According to the federal indictment, a staff OB-GYN identified as “W.R.” later reviewed Perwaiz’s cases and estimated that roughly two-thirds of his surgeries were medically unnecessary. Rather than investigating, the hospital issued W.R. a letter of reprimand warning that his statements were “harmful to the Hospital’s best interests” and threatening “severe corrective action” if he continued to raise concerns.⁶

In 1996, the hospital’s president wrote to the Virginia Board of Medicine and included a “physician profitability” analysis showing that CRMC had generated more than $760,000 in revenue from Perwaiz’s surgeries in 1995 alone, with a profit exceeding $400 per case.⁶

The warnings continued into the 2010s. A 2015 internal analysis confirmed that Perwaiz was repeatedly misclassifying inpatient procedures as outpatient, which let him avoid the closer scrutiny applied to more serious surgeries. High-level meetings were held and emails exchanged among hospital executives about his conduct, but prosecutors allege the hospital did “next to nothing” to stop him.⁶ Nurses reported suspicions that Perwaiz was falsifying due dates to perform unnecessary early inductions, yet the hospital continued to schedule the procedures. He often booked surgeries on Saturdays, when fewer administrators were present.⁷ Perwaiz kept his privileges until his arrest in November 2019.

The Federal Criminal Indictment Against the Hospital

On January 8, 2025, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia returned a two-count indictment against Chesapeake Regional Medical Center. The charges are conspiracy to defraud the United States under 18 U.S.C. § 371 and healthcare fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1347, along with a criminal forfeiture count.⁸ Prosecutors allege that between 2010 and 2019, the hospital received approximately $18.5 million in reimbursements from federal healthcare programs for procedures performed by Perwaiz that were either unnecessary or violated standards of care.⁵ Criminal charges against a hospital itself are rare in federal healthcare fraud enforcement.

Chesapeake Regional filed multiple motions to dismiss. It argued the indictment named the wrong legal entity, that as a municipal corporation it could not form criminal intent or be treated as a “person” under federal criminal law, and that it was entitled to sovereign immunity as an arm of the state. It also warned that a conviction would trigger mandatory exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid, leaving “tens of thousands of people without ready access to healthcare.”⁹

On December 23, 2025, the court denied every motion. It rejected the misnomer argument, held that municipalities can be criminally liable under the statutes at issue, and found that CRMC had not met its burden to prove it is an arm of the state. On the exclusion issue, the court characterized loss of federal program participation as a “collateral consequence” rather than a direct criminal penalty and wrote that “eliminating a criminal actor from the marketplace may ultimately protect the community more than it harms it.”⁹ The criminal case remains pending as of 2026, with no trial date publicly reported.¹⁰

How the Hospital Is Responding

Chesapeake Regional’s position in both cases has been that Perwaiz was never a hospital employee and that his actions were carried out without the organization’s knowledge. The hospital has called the federal indictment “excessive overreach.”⁴ Wickman and DiPietro, the plaintiffs’ attorneys, have said their goal in the civil case is to “expose the wrongdoers” and identify “who else at Chesapeake Regional was aware that this was going on.”¹

The Underlying Conduct by Dr. Perwaiz

Perwaiz, an OB-GYN who practiced in Hampton Roads for decades, was convicted in November 2020 on 52 counts of healthcare fraud and related charges after a nearly five-week jury trial. In May 2021, Senior U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith sentenced him to 708 months — 59 years — in federal prison. The court found his scheme caused more than $18 million in losses to insurers.¹¹¹²

Between at least 2010 and 2019, Perwaiz told patients they had cancer, were at serious risk of developing cancer, or faced fertility problems, then pressured them into invasive procedures they did not need. The surgeries included irreversible hysterectomies on women of childbearing age, sterilizations of Medicaid patients without the legally required 30-day advance consent forms, and elective labor inductions before 39 weeks with no medical justification. He billed insurers for hysteroscopies and colposcopies that were never performed or performed with broken instruments, using fabricated results to justify further surgery. To conceal the fraud, he kept two sets of medical records. Over ten years he billed more than $20 million in fraudulent claims, and investigators found that 40% of his Medicaid patients underwent surgery.¹³¹²

The harm to patients has been permanent. Shantel Boone received an unnecessary hysterectomy in 2017 and was forced into early menopause in her early 30s, dealing with night sweats, hormonal mood swings, and depression. “I don’t have that option if I wanted to,” Boone said of having more children.² The FBI noted that Perwaiz’s procedures caused a range of lasting harm, including incontinence and the inability to engage in sexual intercourse.¹³ Some patients did not learn what had been done to them until after the criminal investigation became public.

Leadership Departure and What Conviction Would Mean

On May 30, 2026, Reese Jackson left his role as president and CEO of Chesapeake Regional Healthcare after ten years. The Chesapeake Hospital Authority Board announced the departure without explanation.¹⁴ Jackson is a named defendant in the civil lawsuit, where plaintiffs allege he failed to suspend Perwaiz’s privileges after receiving complaints from senior medical staff.¹⁵ Amber Egyud, previously the system’s chief operating officer and chief nursing officer, was named interim CEO.¹⁶

The stakes for the hospital extend beyond damages. If the federal criminal case ends in conviction, CRMC faces mandatory exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid. The court acknowledged in its December 2025 ruling that under those circumstances the hospital “would almost certainly cease to exist in its current form.”⁹

1
WAVY. Lawsuit Against Chesapeake Regional Medical Center Grows to 907 Plaintiffs
2
WTKR. Victims Share Stories as Lawsuit Against Chesapeake Regional Medical Center Grows to Over 600 Women Seeking $6 Billion
3
WTKR. Dozens More Women Join $6B Lawsuit Against Chesapeake Regional Medical Center
4
Virginia Lawyers Weekly. 500 Sue Chesapeake Regional, Allege Negligence, Unnecessary Surgeries
5
Virginia Business. 500 Sue Chesapeake Regional, Allege Negligence, Unnecessary Surgeries
6
U.S. Department of Justice. United States v. Chesapeake Regional Medical Center
7
WTKR. Reese Jackson Departs Chesapeake Regional Healthcare After 10 Years
8
HHS Office of Inspector General. Chesapeake Hospital Indicted for Healthcare Fraud Involving Unnecessary Surgical Procedures
9
Findlaw. United States v. Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, 2:25-cr-1
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CourtListener. United States v. Chesapeake Regional Medical Center Docket
11
U.S. Department of Justice. United States v. Javaid Perwaiz
12
U.S. Department of Justice. Jury Convicts Doctor in Scheme to Perform Unnecessary Surgeries on Women
13
FBI. Doctor Sentenced for Performing Unnecessary Surgeries
14
Virginia Business. Chesapeake Regional Healthcare CEO Suddenly Departs Role
15
Virginian-Pilot. Chesapeake Regional Healthcare CEO Exits
16
WTKR. Reese Jackson Departs Chesapeake Regional Healthcare After 10 Years, Amber Egyud Named Interim CEO