Earlier this month a medical director, operator and two unlicensed practitioners from a Houston, TX medical clinic were indicted as part of a multi-million dollar healthcare fraud scheme. The charges are the latest in a string of healthcare fraud schemes across the country, many of which resulted from the global covid pandemic and the onslaught of insurance billing.
Farrah Forough Farizani, Hamid Reza Razavi, Elie Hanna Hajjar, and Juan Acuña, were brought before the U.S. Magistrate Judge Christina Bryan for allegedly submitting false and fraudulent claims to Medicaid and Medicare. They were investigated for services that were not provided as billed or were not provided by a licensed, qualified and enrolled provider. The court has charged all four with one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, while Farizani, Razavi and Hajjar are also being charged with five counts of submitting false statements.
Hajjar and Acuña, former unlicensed practitioners at Hillcroft Physicians, were allegedly posing as licensed medical professionals and treating, prescribing and examining patients, many of which did not speak English or were unaware of the US healthcare system. If these assertions are found to be true, the scheme will have posed tremendous ethical and biological risk to the patients that had been seen by Hajjar and Acuña.
Meanwhile, the indictment asserts that Farizani and Razavi directed their billing staff to submit false claims to Medicaid and Medicare, which totaled approximately $32 million. Some claims submitted by Hillcroft Physicians show records of Farizani seeing and treating patients, even though she was out of the country.
The high-profile case was investigated by the FBI, HHS-OIG and Texas Attorney General’s MFCU, while U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations made the arrests. Trial Attorney Devon Helfmeyer of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, part of a task force operating in 24 districts to clamp down on the growing cases in healthcare fraud, is working with Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Olson of the Southern District of Texas to prosecute the case.
We will continue to monitor this case as it develops. If you are under investigation for healthcare fraud or worried about involvement through your organization, please reach out to Padula Law to schedule a confidential consultation with our seasoned team of defense attorneys.
