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Paul Mathieu, 53, of Morristown and Brooklyn resident Hatem Behiry, 51, used three medical clinics to send false claims to the federal programs over the course of a decade beginning in 2017, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman of the Southern District of New York said.
Authorities estimate the scam cost the federal government $30 million.
Initially, Mathieu posed as the owner of the three clinics actually owned by Alexksandr Burman, a co-conspirator. The Brooklyn clinics were conduits for a steady stream of bills for services and supplies that were either medically unnecessary or were never actually provided.
Those supplies included a whopping amount of adult diapers, which Mathieu ordered from a company controlled by Burman’s wife called Universal Supply Depot. For a time, Mathieu prescribed more incontinence products than virtually any other physician in New York.
Mathieu played a key role in the scheme by pretending to own the clinics controlled by Burman, authorities said. In New York State, medical clinics must be owned and operated by medical professionals.
For about three years until investigators ended the scheme, Mathieu saw no actual patients, instead simply signing off on fraudulent medical charts and unnecessary referrals to specialists, including Behiry.
Behiry, a physical therapy doctor, billed the programs for unnecessary services, in some cases paying part of the reimbursements as kickbacks to his “patients” in exchange for coming to the clinics.
The physicians were found guilty of a variety of fraud charges as well as of making false statements relating to a health care program and face maximum sentences of several years in prison apiece.
A total of 15 people, including the Burmans, have been found guilty in connection with the scheme, prosecutors said.
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