Over 500 women, mostly Black and on Medicaid, are hitting a Virginia hospital with a jaw-dropping $6 billion lawsuit, claiming a rogue OB/GYN mutilated their bodies for profit over a decade, The New York Times reports.

In the lawsuit filed on December 29 in Chesapeake City Circuit Court, and recently shared by Atlanta Black Star, Chesapeake Regional Medical Center and five CEOs are being sued for letting Dr. Javaid Perwaiz continue practicing medicine and seeing patients despite several red flags.

Perwaiz is currently serving a 59-year prison sentence on healthcare fraud charges after being accused of tricking low-income moms into unnecessary C-sections, hysterectomies, and sterilizations without actual consent. Perwaiz would frequently backdate forms and lie about patients having fibroids or fake cancer scares.

“There were not only red flags, they were sirens being alarmed, and the hospital completely turned a blind eye to what he was doing, solely for monetary profit and with complete disregard for patient safety,” Victoria Wickman, an attorney representing the women, told The Times. 

One plaintiff, a mother of seven, says he performed surgery on her several times, leaving her scarred and in constant pain after a secret tubal ligation during twin delivery in 2011. Perwaiz induced labor four times, and all four of her newborns have experienced developmental delays.

Attorneys say hospital bosses ignored countless warnings—babies rushed to NICU at abnormal rates, shady billing tricks like calling inpatient surgeries outpatient for quick cash, and techs refusing to assist because they couldn't see what he was cutting. Meanwhile, Perwaiz brought in over $18 million for the hospital from Medicaid between 2010 and 2019, making him a top earner.​

“The need for intensive neonatal care for the babies Mr. Perwaiz delivered early was so common that CRMC neonatologists referred to it as the ‘Perwaiz special,’” the lawsuit stated.

In addition to the medical center, the lawsuit also names three senior hospital executives: James Reese Jackson, the current president and chief executive, and his two predecessors, Peter Francis Bastone and Wynn Lawton Dixon Jr.

The plaintiffs each want $10 million for lifelong trauma—lost kids, early menopause, mobility issues—that hit hardest in communities already scarred by medical mistrust. 

With plaintiffs swelling past 500, this bombshell exposes how greed can gut lives, sparking calls for accountability in a system that too often fails Black women.

“The majority of women who were targeted were African American women, all of them poor and on Medicaid, who believed everything he said,” Wickman said to The Times.