Glen Head Doctor Gets 13 Years For $7M Medicare Fraud

A surgeon from Glen Head was sentenced to 13 years in prison on Wednesday for submitting more than $7 million in false claims to Medicare, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York.

Dr. Syed Imran Ahmed, 51, was also ordered to pay $7,266,008.95 in restitution, to forfeit $7,266,008.95, and to pay a $20,000 fine.

Ahmed, a licensed medical doctor, practiced at the following hospitals:

• Franklin Hospital in Valley Stream
• Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre
• Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn
• Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn

“Dr. Syed Ahmed treated Medicare like a personal piggy bank, stealing over $7.2 million by making fraudulent claims for medical procedures he never performed,” United States Attorney Richard P. Donoghue said in a statement. “Dr. Ahmed will now pay the price for violating the trust that Medicare places in doctors.”

According to officials, Ahmed billed the Medicare program for incision-and-drainage and wound debridement procedures that he did not perform.

He would write out lists of these “surgeries” and send them to his billing company in Michigan, which would in turn bill the procedures to Medicare. Ahmed would also report that the “surgeries” took place in an operating room so that he would receive more money, officials say. Evidence introduced at trial showed that Medicare paid over $7 million to Ahmed for his fraudulent claims.

“The fraud scheme that Dr. Ahmed engaged in was motivated by pure greed,” said Scott J. Lampert, Special Agent-in-Charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the Office of Inspector General.

Ahmed was convicted by a federal jury of health care fraud, three counts of making false statements related to health care matters and two counts of money laundering. The trial lasted 11 days.

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