A physician who worked at now-defunct New England Pain Management Associates, which operated clinics in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, was sentenced to 75 months in prison on Feb. 6 for conspiring to falsify patient medical records to obtain payments from insurers for medical services that were never provided, according to the Department of Justice.
Moustafa Moataz Ibrahim Aboshady, MD, was sentenced to prison after a jury convicted him of one count of conspiracy to make false statements in connection with healthcare benefit programs and two counts of making false statements in connection with healthcare benefit programs.
Between May 2012 and May 2013, Dr. Aboshady and his co-conspirators falsified medical records and urine drug test results to support claims submitted to Medicare and other insurers for services that were never provided. He also instructed workers at a satellite office in Cairo, Egypt, on how to fake patient encounter notes, how to create fake electronic signatures on the encounter notes and how to make the timestamps for those signatures look authentic, according to the Justice Department.
In March, one of Dr. Aboshady's co-conspirators, Fathalla Mashali, MD, was sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in the scheme after pleading guilty to 27 counts of healthcare fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and 16 counts of money laundering.
In addition to his prison term, Dr. Aboshady was ordered to pay restitution of $1.85 million, according to the Justice Department.
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