West Bloomfield Man Pleads Guilty in $33M Medicare Fraud

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WEST BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, MI – The last of five defendants has pleaded guilty for his role in a massive $33 million Medicare fraud scheme that involved 16 defendants in Metro Detroit, the Justice Department said.

The Metro Detroit defendants were among 243 in six states in a $712 million fraud and kickback scheme that federal officials are called the “largest national Medicare fraud takedown in history.”

Muhammad Tariq, 60, of West Bloomfield Township, an owner of home health-care and hospice companies in Metro Detroit, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health-care fraud and wire fraud in federal court in Detroit on Wednesday, March 23.

See Also

• 16 in Metro Detroit Arrested in Largest-Ever Medicare Fraud Sweep

Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Sean F. Cox accepted pleas on the same charges from four other defendants — Shahid Tahir, 45, and Manawar Javed, 40, both of Bloomfield Township; and two physicians, Dr. Waseem Alam, 60, of Troy, and Dr. Hatem Ataya, 47, of Flushing. Alam also pleaded guilty to one count of structuring, the government said.

All five will be sentenced in July.

The three also admitted to billing Medicare for home care and hospice services that were often medically unnecessary or not provided at all, according to court records.

Alam admitted he was the top referring physician to the companies owned by Tahir, Javed and Tariq, and as such was responsible for millions in Medicare reimbursements, the government said

The Justice Department also said that as part of his guilty plea, Alam admitted that he received kickbacks and other inducements from the owners of At Home Network in exchange for home health-care referrals, and that he bribed his patients into accepting services from the company by providing them with unnecessary narcotics prescriptions, both personally and through unlicensed sources.

Tariq admitted in his plea agreement that he knew about the drug bribes, the Justice Department said. Also, according to Alam’s plea, he instructed others involved in the scheme to falsify patient files to hide the fact that the prescriptions were medically unnecessary.

Ataya was the second-highest referring physician to At-Home Network, and the top referring physician to At Home Hospice. He admitted that the Tahir-associated companies submitted false Medicare billings based on his referrals, the government said.

The fraud case was investigated by the FBI and Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, now operating in nine cities across the country. Since its inception in 2007, the Strike Force has charged nearly 2,000 defendants who are responsibly for more than $6 billion in fraudulent Medicare billings, the government said.