Two interim prohibition orders, $20,000 for 'botched treatments', a Brighton East unit: Victoria's health watchdog bans two alleged fake doctors, August 2026

Australia's registered health practitioners are overseen by Ahpra, the national regulator, but people who sell injections or 'treatments' with no registration at all fall outside that scheme. Victoria therefore gives its Health Complaints Commissioner a separate power under the Health Complaints Act 2016 to investigate general health service providers who are not regulated by Ahpra, and to impose interim prohibition orders of up to 12 weeks where the commissioner believes a provider has breached the general code of conduct and poses an unacceptable risk to the public. The Brighton East case of 2026 shows how that power is used, and how little stands between a patient and an unregistered 'doctor' before it is.

According to AAP, Victoria Police arrested a 39-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman at a unit in Brighton East, Melbourne, on 24 July 2026 after reports that they were posing as medical practitioners. Both were charged with trafficking steroids and released on bail, with a court appearance listed for October. Police allege the pair charged more than $20,000 from the start of 2026 for a series of 'botched treatments', including injections given to a man with a long-term illness that were believed to help with that illness. The two people under the commissioner's orders are named in the AAP report as Maher (Michael) Aboudargham and Assma (Sarah) Samadi.

The regulator moved in parallel. The Health Complaints Commissioner's public register lists an interim prohibition order against Samadi effective from 4 August 2026 and one against Aboudargham from 7 August 2026, each running 12 weeks, followed by second interim orders effective from 30 October 2026 for Samadi (to 21 January 2027) and 3 November 2026 for Aboudargham (to 25 January 2027). AAP reported that the commissioner issued a public warning about Aboudargham on a Tuesday in August, after an investigation launched the previous week, alleging he supplied unapproved medications to treat a significant chronic illness; the order bans him from providing any health service in Victoria for at least 12 weeks, and the same action was taken against Samadi. The Silicon Review reported on 10 August, without naming the individual, that the commissioner's office said it was working with law enforcement and Ahpra and urged anyone treated by the person to come forward.

The mechanism was simple. Nobody at a private unit checks a register before an injection, and the word 'doctor' did the work a certificate would normally do. The only check that could have stopped the first payment was the patient's own search of the Ahpra register, which is free and takes a minute. An interim order is a stop sign, not a conviction; the criminal charges concern steroid trafficking, and the listed sources do not report the outcome of the October hearing.

For a student or family in Australia the lesson is practical. Search the practitioner's name on the Ahpra register before any treatment, and search the Health Complaints Commissioner's list of prohibition orders if the provider is not registered. Treatment offered at a residential address, paid in cash, with medicines that have no Australian approval, is exactly the pattern these orders are written for. If you have already paid such a provider, the commissioner asks you to report it.