Here are four physician fraud cases that Becker's has reported on since Aug. 7:
1. Samson Orusa, MD, was sentenced to seven years in prison and to pay more than $1 million in restitution for 13 counts of healthcare fraud.
Dr. Orusa, 61, billed federal health insurers $1,885,245 for hundreds of medically unnecessary services, including requiring patients to visit his clinic in Clarksville, Tenn., as many as six times per month to obtain their prescriptions.
2. A physician, pharmacist and pharmacy technician who are all based in Michigan were charged for their alleged roles in a more than $7 million fraud scheme.
From 2016 to 2021, Dapid Faraj, MD, Samer Youssef and Houda Bazzi wrote and filled unnecessary prescriptions in the names of patients they knew, including Medicare beneficiaries, or in the names of Mr. Youssef and Mr. Bazzi themselves, to obtain expensive specialty drugs to resell. They allegedly had the medically unnecessary drugs billed to Medicare and Blue Care Network and shipped to addresses under their control to sell at 100 percent profit.
3. Daniel Castro, MD, will be sentenced in October for his role in a scheme to defraud benefit programs by performing medically unnecessary sinus surgeries.
From February 2015 to May 2017 at Bronson Battle Creek (Mich.) Hospital, Dr. Castro also billed for excisions of single lymph nodes, submandibular glands and other glands of the neck as if he performed modified radical or selective neck dissections.
4. Arnold, Md.-based physician Ron Elfenbein, MD, was convicted for submitting more than $15 million in fraudulent claims for patients who received COVID-19 tests at his medical centers.
Dr. Elfenbein operated multiple COVID-19 drive-thru testing sites and instructed his employees to fraudulently bill for high-level evaluation and management visits along with the COVID-19 tests.