Doctor gets 18 months in prison for part in $30M fraud scheme

A doctor who falsely posed as the owner of a medical clinic was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in prison for his participation in a $30 million scheme to defraud Medicare and New York state’s Medicaid program.

Mustak Y. Vaid, 45, of Roundtown, Michigan, falsely posed as the owner of a medical clinic because New York State law requires that such clinics be owned by a medical professional. The clinic was, in fact, owned by Aleksandr Burman, who owned and operated six medical clinics in Brooklyn between 2007 and 2013 and was sentenced last year in a related case to 10 years in prison, prosecutors said.

Vaid also falsely claimed he had examined and treated hundreds of patients he had never seen, according to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the southern district of New York.

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Vaid pled guilty last November to healthcare fraud and conspiracy to commit healthcare, mail and wire fraud. Prosecutors said he signed fraudulent documents falsely representing to banks, Medicare, Medicaid and others that he was the sole owner of Ocean Side Medical of Brooklyn, one of the six clinics involved in the fraud scheme.

He is the seventh defendant and the first doctor to be sentenced after pleading guilty in this case and a related case. In addition to the prison sentence, Vaid was also ordered to pay restitution of $2,669,231 and to forfeit $103,843 in ill-gotten gains.

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A second doctor, Ewald J. Antoine, M.D., of Valley Stream, New York, has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced on August 21. A third doctor, Paul J. Mathieu, of Morristown, New Jersey, is scheduled to go to trial in November, along with a physical therapist and occupational therapist charged in the case.

Prosecutors said Burman hired the three doctors to pose as the nominal owner of his clinics since he did not have a medical license. As part of the fraud scheme, the medical clinics paid elderly people to act as patients and billed for unnecessary and nonexistent medical goods and services.