‘No-Show’ doctor pleads guilty in connection to $13M fraud scheme
Ninth Defendant Convicted in Connection with Health Care Fraud at Medical Clinic in Bensonhurst
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle has learned that Connecticut resident Dr. Okon Umana, 67, pleaded guilty Monday in Brooklyn federal court to conspiring to defraud the United States in connection with his role as a “no show” doctor in a $13 million health care fraud scheme. Dr. Umana is the last of nine defendants charged to plead guilty in connection with the scheme at the Cropsey Medical Care PLLC clinic in Bensonhurst.
According to court documents from 2009 to 2012, Umana was the medical director of the Cropsey Medical Care clinic, where patients received medically unnecessary physical therapy, diagnostic testing and other services, which were provided by a physician assistant who was acting without supervision. Such purported medical services were then fraudulently billed by Cropsey Medical to Medicare and Medicaid under Umana’s provider number.
From approximately November 2009 to October 2012, Cropsey Medical submitted more than $13 million in claims to Medicare and Medicaid, seeking reimbursement for a wide variety of fraudulent medical services and procedures, including physician office visits, physical therapy and diagnostic tests that were not medically necessary and often did not occur.
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