$7M Medicare Scheme Gets Canton Man Prison Sentence

• Get Patch’s daily newsletter and real-time news alerts.

CANTON, MI – The owner and operator of a Detroit-area home health care agency who directed a $7 million health care fraud scheme was sentenced to 80 months in prison in federal court Thursday.

Advance Home Health Care Services Inc. owner Amer Ehsan, 44, of Canton, was also ordered to pay more than $4.5 million in restitution under the sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Paul D. Borman of the Eastern District of Michigan.

Ehsan admitted to conspiring with physicians, physical therapists and patient recruiters to bill the Medicare program for unnecessary home health-care and therapy services, the government said.

Under the scheme, he paid the co-conspirator physicians to refer Medicare beneficiaries to Advance and sign medical documents falsely certifying that they required home health care, the government said. Ehsan also admitted in his plea that at his direction, Medicare beneficiaries received cash kickbacks in exchange for signing multiple blank physical therapy records.

Additionally, Ehsan admitted that he owned and controlled Michigan Rehab and Management Services LLC, which he used to sell information about Medicare beneficiaries and corresponding fictitious patient files to other Detroit-area home health care agencies.

Medicare paid a total of more than $4.5 million as a result of Ehsan’s conduct with these two companies, the government said.

Twelve co-conspirators in the wide ranging scheme all have pleaded guilty.

The FBI and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General investigated the case against Ehsan, which was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force under the supervision of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Michigan.

Trial attorney Elizabeth Young of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Wagner and special trial attorney Katie R. Fink of the Eastern District of Michigan prosecuted this case.

Since it was formed in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, now operating in nine cities across the country, has charged nearly 2,300 defendants who have collectively billed the Medicare program for more than $7 billion.

» Photo via Shutterstock