Township Doctor Sentenced To Prison For Kickback Scheme

A township doctor with a practice in Jamesburg was sentenced to one year in federal prison June 8 for his role in a kickback scheme involving a Morris County diagnostics company.

Dr. Paresh Patel, 55, will also have to pay a $6,000 fine and had to forfeit more than $174,000 he received in bribes during the four-year scheme, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Patel previously plead guilty before U.S. District Judge Mary L. Cooper, sitting in Trenton, to charges that he violated the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, according to the release.

According to the release, Patel accepted more than $174,000 in bribes for referring his patients to Biosound Medical Services, a mobile diagnostic company, from September 2009 to December 2013. The company’s owners, Nita K. Patel and Kirtish N. Patel (no relation to the defendant) also paid Patel’s property taxes and home renovation expenses as part of the bribes.

Nita and Kirtish Patel plead guilty last year to health care fraud for forging physician signatures on diagnostic reports that were never reviewed by a specialist physician and were actually authored by Kirtish N. Patel, who did not have a medical license, according to the release. Both men are awaiting sentencing.

U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman credited special agents of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Scott J. Lampert, and special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Timothy Gallagher in Newark, with the investigation leading to the sentence, according to the release.

The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Alfonzo Walsman of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Health Care and Government Fraud Unit in Newark.

Fishman reorganized the health care fraud practice shortly after taking office, creating a stand-alone Health Care and Government Fraud Unit to handle both criminal and civil investigations and prosecutions of health care fraud offenses. Since 2010, the office has recovered more than $1.29 billion in health care fraud and government fraud settlements, judgments, fines, restitution and forfeiture under the False Claims Act, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and other statutes, according to the release.

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