Category: Medicaid fraud

Virginia Pharmacy Owner Sentenced for Prescription Medication Fraud

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

But, it sure strikes me that there must be more to this story than we are being told!

My first question is how does a 29-year-old, Latif Mohamed Chowdhury, aka Gulam Latif Chaudhury, who is not a Pharmacist, come to own two pharmacies and set up this elaborate scheme to get his hands on dangerous drugs and bilk insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid out of hundreds of thousands of dollars?  A 29-year-old!  Clearly there is something more.

Indeed I wonder how he managed such a light sentence—4 years—when he could have gotten twenty as noted here in an earlier article about his arrest.

Did he cut some deal with the feds to help them find bigger fish involved in the scheme?

This is the press statement from the US Justice Department on Chowdury’s sentencing. Thanks as always to readers who find important stories like this one that doubtless few will ever hear about otherwise.

Former Pharmacy Owner Sentenced for Prescription Medication Fraud

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A former pharmacy owner was sentenced today [September 27th—ed] to four years in prison for fraudulently filling and dispensing thousands of prescription medications, including opioids, outside the usual course of professional practice.

“Chowdhury blithely violated his position of trust,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “Chowdhury’s warped business philosophy led him to illegally distribute a significant number of prescription medications, including dangerous, addictive opioids. Moreover, his reckless actions add to the financial cost of health care as he fraudulently billed at least $500,000 to health insurance programs for prescriptions that were never filled.”

According to court documents, Latif Mohamed Chowdhury, aka Gulam Latif Chaudhury, 29, operated and controlled two now-defunct pharmacies known as Alexandria Care Pharmacy LLC (ACP-1) and Alexandria Care Pharmacy Store #2 LLC (ACP-2). Chowdhury has never been a licensed pharmacist and has no medical qualifications. Nonetheless, between August 2015 and February 2016, Chowdhury fraudulently operated ACP-1 and ACP-2 by personally filling and dispensing thousands of dosage units of medications, including opioids, without a licensed pharmacist on-site. Chowdhury used the identities of licensed pharmacists, without their permission, to carry out his scheme.

“Chowdhury used his trusted position to enrich himself at the expense of others,” said Timothy M. Dunham, Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Division, FBI Washington Field Office. “Today’s sentencing makes it clear that the illegal distribution of opioids will not be tolerated. The FBI will work closely with our partners to continue to investigate allegations of healthcare fraud.”

Chowdhury admitted to fraudulently billing health insurance benefit programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, for refills of prescription medications that were not delivered to customers even though his pharmacies received payment for these prescriptions. Chowdhury also submitted fraudulent health insurance claims in the names of pharmacy customers for medications that were not authorized by any physician, and were not dispensed to any of the customers, in order to enrich himself through illicit profits generated by ACP-1 and ACP-2.

More here.

Of course no mention is made of his immigration status.

Feds Bust Huge ($258 million!) California Medicare/Medicaid Fraud Networks

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 7 Comments

“Sticking taxpayers with a bill for unnecessary healthcare services will never be tolerated”

(HHS Office of Inspector General)

Perhaps even worse than the millions of taxpayer dollars lost to these alleged cheats—medical doctors and other medical professionals—is the fact that they diagnosed people with major illnesses that the patients didn’t have!

Here is the Justice Department’s press statement on the bust last week.

All I could think of as I read the long statement from the DOJ was, just imagine what a run on the treasury there will be if the Dems get Medicare for all!

Here we see that one of the alleged crooked doctors (Dr. Negash Shetty) has a long record of defrauding us.  Of course I couldn’t find a picture or any information on his immigration status, but his name is a common Indian name.

LOL! I did find that in 1996 he hired “celebrity lawyer and law professor Alan M. Dershowitz” to get him out of one of his run-ins with the law.

Here is the Daily Pilot giving us a chronology of Dr. Negash Shetty’s storied career as an on-again, off-again medical doctor in trouble with the law!

H.B. doctor indicted in $135-million Medicare fraud scheme

A Huntington Beach doctor with a history of legal and disciplinary problems is one of seven healthcare professionals accused of participating in a Medicare fraud scheme that netted about $135 million through fraudulent insurance claims, according to federal prosecutors.

See glowing reports from patients about GCC founded by Sara Soulati  who was also charged. https://www.yelp.com/biz/global-cardio-care-inc-inglewood-2

Nagesh Shetty, 74, was indicted Wednesday in connection with the scheme, which involved “medically unnecessary” cardiac treatments and testing through an Inglewood healthcare provider, Global Cardio Care, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

[….]

Shetty was first licensed by the California Medical Board in 1979 and has operated practices in Costa Mesa, West Covina and the West Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, according to documents and online records.

In 1994, Shetty was indicted in federal court on 28 counts of mail fraud on allegations of defrauding a Minnesota-based insurance company through “nonexistent, medically unnecessary or excessive medical treatment.” That case was later transferred to a California district court and charges were eventually dropped, court records show.

In 1996, Shetty was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and fined $40,000 for filing false income tax returns and failing to report more than $400,000 in income over a three-year period in the 1980s, court documents show. At the time of the crimes, Shetty was owner and attending physician of Harbor Newport Medical Clinic in Costa Mesa.

While in prison, Shetty was indicted in 1998 on federal charges alleging that he defrauded military and private health insurance programs.

More charges, then this!

The California Medical Board revoked Shetty’s license in 2000, according to board records. His license to practice medicine also was revoked in New York in 1999 and Washington state in 2001, records show.

In 2005, Shetty petitioned the California board to reinstate his medical certificate. At the time, Shetty was bagging groceries and stocking shelves at a store and said his inability to practice his profession had caused emotional and financial strain for his wife and four children.

He was granted a probationary license, according to a decision by an administrative law judge, with the conditions that he complete an ethics course and a clinical training program, undergo monitoring and be barred from practicing solo, supervising physician assistants and handling any billing matters.

In 2009, Shetty completed his probation and the board reinstated his license.

They reinstated his medical license and he went right back to scamming us!

More here.

 

How Two Massive Fraud Cases Intersected

~ Ann Corcoran

Because the cases are instructive and because, yes, I do write from time to time about American frauds and crooks not just the ‘New American’ variety, here is an extensive piece at the LA Times about how perhaps the largest Medicare fraud case in US history intersected with the College Admissions scam involving the rich and well-connected.

Philip Esformes
Philip Esformes before the fall.  As a flight risk he has been behind bars since July 2016 awaiting sentencing in September.

Now if only a paper with the stature of the LA Times would put an investigative journalist to work on the Kenyan Killer case where as one reader pointed out it would be difficult for the alleged prolific killer Billy Chemirmir to pawn that much jewelry without help, a network of criminals (dependent on old ladies being murdered) might be exposed.
I’ve reported previously on the case of Philip Esformes who ran a nursing home empire built on defrauding you and me, American taxpayers, but haven’t written about the Singer scam designed for elites to get their little darlings into top tier colleges.

FBI found clues to college admissions scandal years earlier in massive Medicare fraud case

 

Federal authorities were combing through the finances and phone records of a Miami businessman suspected of Medicare fraud when they came across a curious name: Rick Singer.

Rick Singer
Rick Singer https://www.foxnews.com/us/who-is-william-rick-singer-college-admissions-cheating-scandals-alleged-ringleader

Philip Esformes, who was accused of farming out patients from his nursing homes to steal millions in bogus insurance claims, had sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to a foundation Singer controlled. And in text messages discovered on Esformes’ phone, the men discussed how one of Esformes’ sons had performed on his college entrance exams.
Only years later would authorities learn what Esformes had paid Singer to do: Slip his daughter into USC as a fake soccer player and fix his youngest son’s college entrance exam, according to statements a prosecutor made in court and sources familiar with the case.
Singer has said he struck similar deals with dozens more parents, an admission that has roiled higher education and implicated elites from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the Newport coast.
But in 2016, when agents seized the iPhone Esformes used to text Singer and obtained their messages, Singer was a peripheral, if curious, player in an enormous healthcare fraud investigation. The Esformes case marks the first time Singer is known to have crossed the radar of law enforcement.

[….]

It is unclear how much federal authorities uncovered of Esformes’ dealings with Singer while investigating his case. But at his trial in March, a fraud expert used by the government to make sense of his finances testified that Esformes had made $400,000 in payments over several years to Singer’s foundation. At least some of the money was traced to Medicaid and Medicare funds, the expert testified.

Too funny! Esformes paid Singer $400,000 and his daughter did get into USC as a fake soccer player, but get this…

The daughter, who could not be reached for comment, was enrolled at USC for a year before transferring to a fashion school in New York City, according to a source with knowledge of the case and her LinkedIn profile.

There is much more, continue reading here.
 

Doctor Sentenced to Prison in Bank Fraud Case, Could be Deported When Released

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 3 Comments

I hate these stories about bank fraud because they have so many twists and turns that they make my head spin.

Dr. Aslam
Dr. Zahid Aslam is going to jail!

And, this one might not have been worth even writing about except that a headline caught my eye—a rare headline that uses the word “deportation” because he was in the country illegally as he proceeded to defraud us.
I was also interested because the crook was practicing medicine in Maryland (New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware as well).
Here is the headline at the Business Journal,

Former doctor faces possible deportation after being sentenced to prison in fraud case

I couldn’t access that story because apparently I’ve read too many stories there recently, but don’t worry because the case of gynecologist Dr. Zahid Aslam is covered extensively in other publications going back a couple of years.
Continue reading “Doctor Sentenced to Prison in Bank Fraud Case, Could be Deported When Released” →

Wyoming: Kahn Brothers Found Guilty in Drug Conspiracy Case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 2 Comments
Kahn “preyed on” addicted people for years, and the verdict confirmed that a person’s profession does not put them above the law.***

(Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Sprecher)

 
One more story about ‘new Americans’ getting rich (for awhile) by dealing in controlled substances ostensibly for pain management.  Ho hum!  So what else is new?

Dr. Kahn and Lyn
Dr. Shakeel Kahn and wife Lyn

However, this story interested me for the primary reason that it is from Wyoming (not Michigan! not California! not any state where large numbers of new Americans are selling drugs, or dirty docs are prescribing them!).
By the way, and unrelated to this story, is the fact that Wyoming is the only state in the nation that doesn’t resettle refugees.
Also, interesting is the fact that Dr. Shakeel Kahn’s wife, originally a patient, then a ‘wife’ and partner in the crime, became a witness for the prosecution after their arrest in one of their several homes.
People traveled from faraway states to Wyoming to pick up their illegal drug prescriptions.
Additionally, Kahn was implicated in the death of one patient from Arizona.
Continue reading “Wyoming: Kahn Brothers Found Guilty in Drug Conspiracy Case” →