A federal jury in Los Angeles has convicted the owner of a medical clinic for his role in a health care fraud scheme and for filing false income tax returns.
Michael Huynh, 57, of Encino, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and 11 counts of filing false tax returns after a seven-day trial before United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II. Huynh will be sentenced on January 30, 2017.
Evidence introduced at trial showed that Huynh, the office manager and part-owner of M.T.P. Medical Clinic, Inc., a medical clinic located in Reseda, California, provided false prescriptions to a licensed pharmacist and co-conspirator, Farhad N. Dany Sharim, who submitted false claims to insurance companies for drugs that were never dispensed. Sharim was a co-owned and controlled Century Discount Pharmacy in Reseda, California
Once Sharim received payments from the insurance companies, he paid Huynh for the false prescriptions. Trial evidence also showed that, between January 2004 and November 2009, Huynh received 82 checks from Sharim totaling over $1.1 million. Huynh filed false federal tax returns for tax years 2007 through 2011 that underreported by over $1.6 million in total the medical clinic’s gross receipts and sales on the corporate tax returns and income on the individual tax returns.
Defendant Huynh provided co-conspirator Sharim with falsified prescriptions for drugs that had purportedly been authorized by Dr. H. H. for patients of the M.T. P. Medical Clinic who were insured by health care benefit programs. Dr. H.H. did not work at the M. T.P. Medical Clinic and these patients did not actually receive the drugs that had been purportedly prescribed by Dr. H. H. Many insurers were alleged to have been defrauded by this scheme including Aetna, CVS Caremark and Express Scripts,
In order to disguise the payments that he received from co-conspirator Sharim in exchange for the falsified prescriptions, defendant Huynh provided co- conspirator Sharim with false invoices in the name of H. D. H. Advertising for purported advertising services rendered to CDP.
“This defendant played an integral role in a health care fraud scheme that netted over $1 million for drugs that were never prescribed or delivered,” said United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker. “Such massive fraudulent conduct impacts everyone who seeks medical care and who pays for health insurance, since it undermines the integrity of our health care system and preys on vulnerable members of our community. For that, this defendant and his co-conspirator must be held accountable.”
Sharim pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud on November 18, 2013, and will be sentenced on December 5.
“The defendant carried out this fraud at the expense of many, to include his own family members whose identities were used to camouflage the scheme, as well as the patients at his clinic, many of whom are immigrants and did not know their insurance was being billed by a pharmacy they did not go to by a prescribing doctor they did not see, and for medications they did not receive,” said Deirdre Fike, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “Health care fraud investigators and prosecutors did an outstanding job of delivering justice to the defendant’s victims, including the patients at his clinic and the insurance companies who suffered losses.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, IRS-CI and the Office of Personnel Management’s Office of Inspector General investigated the case, which was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California and the Department of Justice’s Fraud Section. Assistant United States Attorney Steven Arkow and Fraud Section Trial Attorney Alexis Gregorian prosecuted the case.
At sentencing, Huynh faces a statutory maximum sentence of 38 years in federal prison – five years for the conspiracy count and three years for each of 11 tax fraud counts. Sharim faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.