NEW YORK
A New York surgeon who practiced at hospitals in Brooklyn and Long Island, was found guilty Thursday of submitting millions of dollars in bogus claims to Medicare for services he didn’t perform, federal officials announced Friday.
Syed Imran Ahmed, 51, of Long Island, New York, was convicted of one count of health care fraud, three counts of making false statements related to health care matters and two counts of money laundering, officials said.
Ahmed, specializing in wound care and weight loss procedures, preyed on patients, many of whom were “elderly, demented, or dying,” and turned them into cash cows to fatten his bank account, Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Notopoulos said in federal court, according to the New York Daily News.
Ahmed’s attorney Catherine Grealis told jurors in opening statements that her client Made mistakes and that he didn’t steal money from Medicare. He just kept bad books.
According to evidence presented at trial, Ahmed submitted millions of dollars in false claims to the Medicare program for incision-and-drainage and wound debridement surgeries that he did not perform.
Trial evidence showed that many of the claims also falsely stated that the surgeries were performed in an operating room, even though Ahmed never performed the surgeries, according to authorities.
The evidence introduced at trial showed Ahmed submitted over $25 million in false claims to the Medicare program for surgeries he never performed and he received over $3 million from Medicare as payment for the false claims, officials said.