Brooklyn doctor sentenced to 18 years for Medicare fraud

March 14, 2014 By Charisma L. Miller, Esq. Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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Brooklyn Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser has sentenced Dr. Mikhail L. Presman, a licensed psychiatrist employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), to 18 months’ imprisonment for Medicare fraud charges.

Presman, 55, had been charged with submitting false Medicare claims and unjustly receiving more than $2.8 million in Medicare payments. It was alleged that “between 2006 and 2012, Presman submitted claims for home medical visits for substantially every day of the year – seven days a week, 365 days a year,” for patients he supposedly assisted while off duty.

After a surveillance effort conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, it was revealed that on several occasions, after Presman worked a full eight-hour shift at the VA, he would return directly home in the evening and not leave again until the next morning.

Presman’s work-to-home pattern did not provide the time commitment necessary to see Medicare patients outside of his normal VA duties, the federal indictment noted. In 2011, based on Medicare claims, Presman supposedly saw an “average of 14.66 patients daily,” the indictment reads.

“Even if Presman only spent 30 minutes with each patient during a home visit,” the charging papers continue, “he would have spent seven hours a day in patients’ homes in addition to the eight hours he spent at the VA.”

Given Presman’s pattern of not leaving his apartment once he arrived home from work, the amount of patient claims he submitted raised considerable suspicion.

In addition, Presman submitted claims for patient visits on days where he is documented as being either out of the country or out of state.

Presman’s year-and-a-half prison term will be followed by three years of supervised release and restitution of $1.2 million to Medicare.