Medicare fraud costs everyone, from patients, to taxpayers on down. Those who commit Medicare fraud can be found to have violated the Medicare Fraud False Claims Act. Those who know of such fraud are encouraged to come forward with any and all information, and are offered protected by whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act.
A doctor who owns a cosmetic health care clinic in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles now faces as much as 10 years in prison after pleading guilty on Jan. 24 to federal Medicare fraud charges, based on an elaborate scheme in which he billed Medicare for procedures he never performed. In many cases, he never even met the patients he supposedly treated.
The doctor, Pezhman Ebrahimzadeh, who operated under the pseudonym “Pez Abrahams,” is the owner of the Winnetka Medical Group, which operated the Health & Beauty Clinic, a cosmetic health care clinic.
According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney General’s office, Dr. Ebrahimzadeh commonly provided laser and liposuction treatments to patients. But he also submitted Medicare claims for more expensive procedures, including “revascularization, ablation of a bone tumor or the placement of a radiotherapy catheter in a breast,” even though he hadn’t provided the treatments. In many cases, he didn’t even have the equipment necessary to provide such treatments.
The statement also noted that Dr. Ebrahimzadeh went so far as to obtain beneficiary information for patients that weren’t his and use that information to submit phony bills to Medicare. In all, between September 2008 and April 2012, he submitted $7.5 million in fraudulent claims, with Medicare reimbursing him for $3 million of that.
It is entirely possible that federal prosecutors in this case received their information from a whistleblower. Eventually, federal prosecutors may receive a cash settlement from the doctor in this case, and under the False Claims Act, that whistleblower may be entitled to compensation from that settlement.
If you have knowledge of Medicare fraud under the False Claims Act, you may be entitled to compensation if you expose them. Contact the Medicare Fraud False Claims Act Attorney at Hill Law Firm to help you.