Farmington Hills, Mich., physician Jose Castro-Ramirez has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for his role in a Medicare fraud scheme.
He was also ordered to pay $9.4 million in restitution and sentenced to three years of supervised release following his prison term.
A federal jury in March convicted Castro-Ramirez of one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, 11 counts of healthcare fraud and one count of conspiracy to launder the proceeds of the fraudulent scheme, according to the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services.
According to court records, Castro-Ramirez, a physician licensed in Michigan, and Suresh Chand conspired in 2003 to defraud the Medicare program.
Chand, who was sentenced to 81 months in prison in April for his role in the scheme, owned and controlled several companies operating in Warren, Mich., including Continental Rehab Services, Inc., and Pacific Management Services, Inc., that claimed to provide physical and occupational therapy services to Medicare beneficiaries.
According to investigators, Chand and his associates created fictitious files to document physical and occupational therapy services provided to Medicare beneficiaries that had not been provided.
Between approximately January of 2003 and June of 2007, Chand and his co-conspirators submitted false claims to the Medicare program totaling approximately $18.3 million for physical and occupational therapy services that were supposedly ordered and supervised by Castro-Ramirez. Medicare paid approximately $8.5 million on those claims.
In addition, Castro-Ramirez submitted approximately $1.4 million in claims to the Medicare program for “home visits” supposedly provided to beneficiaries recruited by Chand and his co-conspirators. Medicare paid about $929,000 for the claims, according to the investigators.
Since March 2007, Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in seven districts have obtained indictments of more than 810 individuals who collectively have falsely billed the Medicare program for more than $1.85 billion.