Doctor And Physical Therapist Found Guilty Of Participating In $30M Scheme To Defraud Medicare and

[TexasTowelie]

Doctor And Physical Therapist Found Guilty Of Participating In $30 Million Scheme To Defraud Medicare And Medicaid


Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that medical doctor PAUL J. MATHIEU and physical therapy doctor HATEM BEHIRY were each found guilty of participating in a $30 million scheme to defraud Medicare and the New York State Medicaid Program. The defendants were convicted following a six-week jury trial before U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield.

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said: “These corrupt doctors betrayed their medical training, their professions, and their Medicare and Medicaid billing privileges. They chose not to heal, but to harm, the taxpaying public – the real victims of this scheme.”

According to the evidence presented during the trial and statements made in related court filings and proceedings:

Between 2007 and 2013, MATHIEU fraudulently posed as the owner of three of six medical clinics in Brooklyn (the “Clinics”), which were all in fact owned by co-conspirator Alexksandr Burman. During that time period, the Clinics fraudulently billed Medicare and Medicaid approximately $30 million for medical services and supplies that were medically unnecessary and/or not provided. Throughout this time period, MATHIEU fraudulently posed as the owner of three of those clinics, in order to satisfy a New York State law requirement that medical clinics must be owned and operated by a medical professional.

For the last three-and-a-half years of the scheme, MATHIEU also directly participated in the fraudulent billing practices of the Clinics, by visiting several of the Clinics on a weekly basis, where he would sign stacks of false and fraudulent medical charts, and issue referrals for expensive additional testing, occupational therapy, and physical therapy, including for physical therapy purportedly provided by defendant BEHIRY. During this time period, MATHIEU saw no patients at all, simply falsifying enormous stacks of phony medical records falsely stating that he had seen and treated such patients.

Read more: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/doctor-and-physical-therapist-found-guilty-participating-30-million-scheme-defraud