Bergen Cardiologist Charged With Bilking $600K From Insurance Companies

A Wyckoff cardiologist is accused of double-billing insurance companies $600,000 from 2006 to 2011.

A state Grand Jury indicted Dr. Roger Coletti, 69, on nine counts of second-degree health care claims fraud for allegedly filing fraudulent bills to Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey and UnitedHealthcare Inc., Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman announced Wednesday. Coletti allegedly filed the bills over the course of eight months beginning in December of 2010.

Coletti is charged with insurance fraud and attempted theft by deception, also second-degree offenses, for allegedly submitting fraudulent claims to those companies and Aetna Insurance Co. from April 2006 and October 2011.

The indictment states that Coletti filed multiple claims for the same service to the same person but under different tax identification numbers assigned to three facilities he owned and operated: North American Diagnostics, Interventional Cardiovascular Associates, and Bergen Medical Images, Hoffman said.

Coletti faces a maximum sentence of 110 years in state prison and a nearly $1.7 million fine if found guilty on all counts.

“Doctors who file false claims undermine the integrity of the health care claims process, a system that depends on the trustworthiness of the licensed professionals,” said Hoffman. “Breaking the law in the name of greed is as egregious as it gets for a health care provider.”