Fatima Hassan, Medicare Fraud, Michigan 2011

Fatima Hassan, 44, was sentenced to 48 months in prison for her leading role in a more than $1.9 million Medicare fraud scheme, announced the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Hassan was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn in the Eastern District of Michigan. In addition to her prison term, Hassan was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $855,484 in restitution.

Hassan pleaded guilty on September 15, 2011, to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. According to the plea documents, in 2005, Hassan incorporated a company known as Jos Campau Physical Therapy, which she owned with a co-defendant.

According to court documents, Hassan paid kickbacks to recruiters who obtained Medicare beneficiary information and signatures needed to create fictitious physical and occupational therapy files. The Medicare beneficiaries pre-signed forms and visit sheets that were later falsified to indicate that they received therapy services that were never provided.

Hassan and the co-owner of Jos Campau Physical Therapy hired and paid an occupational therapist and an uncertified occupational therapy assistant to falsify medical files. The occupational therapist created patient evaluation forms for beneficiaries whom she had never met, seen or evaluated. The uncertified therapy assistant fabricated and signed patient notes for occupational therapy visits. The uncertified therapy assistant did not provide the services reflected in the fictitious patient notes.

Hassan admitted that, between approximately June 2005 and May 2007, she and her co-conspirators at Jos Campau Physical Therapy submitted or caused the submission of approximately $1.9 million in fraudulent claims to the Medicare program for physical and occupational therapy services that were never rendered.

Tariq Mahmud, the owner of a Medicare provider company that bought and billed Jos Campau Physical Therapy’s fake files, was convicted at trial on February 2, 2012, for his role in the scheme and is scheduled to be sentenced on June 11, 2012.

This case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Catherine K. Dick and Assistant Chief Benjamin D. Singer of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, with assistance from Trial Attorney Niall M. O’Donnell. It was investigated by the FBI and HHS-OIG, and was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.

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