A Troy-area businessman has been ordered to pay back what he stole from Medicaid
56-year-old Bashar Imam is a well-known investor and developer in the Troy area. He is also a respected member of Detroit’s Syrian immigrant community. Ask people in his community to describe him, and they would most likely use words like ‘entrepreneur’, ‘hard worker’ and ‘prosperous businessman.’ And while those may all be true, they are currently overshadowed by other words, like ‘court’, ‘sentenced’, “thief” and ‘fraud’.
Imam appeared in Lansing’s 30th Circuit Court recently, where Circuit Court Judge Clinton Canady ordered him to pay back no less than $250,000 as part of a settlement agreement in his fraud case. Of that total, $100,000 is meant to pay back the money that Imam defrauded from Medicaid, while $100 is the total of his fines, and the remainder is meant to cover court costs. The appears to be another case of greed and dishonesty by a wealthy businessman.
According to court documents, Imam is in charge of the medical billing for three Hamtramck clinics. There he submitted ‘up coded’ bills for the same patient at several different locations, claiming that they were from an urgent care center when in fact they weren’t. The Attorney General’s office opened an investigation into the situation when a data mining project run by the Health Care Fraud Division found records of improper Medicaid billings.
This fraud case was investigated by the Attorney General’s office.
In March of this year, the Michigan Attorney General’s office brought a single count of Medicaid Fraud against Imam. The charge was a felony, punishable by up to four years in prison and fines of up to $50,000. However, Imam’s attorneys worked out a plea bargain deal with the prosecutor’s office, and Imam pled guilty as part of the settlement deal. In return he was only sentenced to one day of jail time, and required to pay a substantial sum of money in the form of restitution and fines.
According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, medicaid fraud is a serious problem that affects all Michigan residents. Not sure how someone else’s fraud could affect you? Well, the MDHHS says that Health Care Fraud uses up “valuable public funds needed to help vulnerable children and adults access health care.”
Common examples of Medicaid Fraud include:
- Billing for medical services not actually performed
- Providing unnecessary services
- Billing for more expensive services
- Billing for services separately that should legitimately be one billing
- Billing more than once for the same medical service
- Dispensing generic drugs but billing for brand-name drugs
- Giving or accepting money, gifts or services in return for medical services, (eg: kickbacks)
- Falsifying cost reports
Health Care Fraud, Medicaid and Medicare Fraud, and all other types of financial crimes are vigorously prosecuted in Michigan. If you need aggressive Medicare fraud defense, The Kronzek Firm is available to assist you. We practice in all state and federal courts in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, and have extensive experience and success defending people against fraud and financial crime charges. Call us at 866 766 5245. We are available 24/7 to take your call.