Moustafa Moataz Ibrahim Aboshady, False Billing Scheme, Massachusetts 2023

BOSTON – In a shocking case of medical malfeasance, a physician at the now-defunct New England Pain Management Associates Inc. was sentenced to 75 months in prison for conspiring to falsify patient medical records in order to obtain payments from Medicare and commercial insurers for medical services that were not performed.

Moustafa Moataz Ibrahim Aboshady, 36, of Lake Forest, Calif., was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton to 75 months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $1,852,459.

In September 2018, a federal jury convicted Aboshady of one count of conspiracy to make false statements in connection with health care benefit programs and two counts of making false statements in connection with health care benefit programs.

Aboshady conspired with Dr. Fathalla Mashali, a pain management physician, other members of New England Pain Management Associates Inc., and members of a satellite office in Cairo, Egypt, to falsify medical records and urine drug test results to support claims for payment to Medicare and insurers for services that Mashali did not render.

As part of the conspiracy, Aboshady instructed the Cairo office on how to fake patient encounter notes, how to create false electronic signatures on the encounter notes and how to make the timestamps for those signatures look realistic.

The FBI is committed to protecting government and private health care programs and stopping those who steal from them, said Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division.

Aboshady’s actions were described as ‘unlawful, unethical, and unprofessional’ by United States Attorney Andrew E. Lelling, who added that Aboshady ‘used the Medicare system as his own personal ATM, cheating taxpayers and private insurance companies out of thousands of dollars by billing them for medical services that were never performed.’

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