Mark Wilfred Tamarin, 65, a urologist, was sentenced to 71 months in federal prison for submitting fraudulent billings totaling more than $700,000 to Medicare for medically unnecessary and nonexistent treatments, sometimes billing for purported patient visits miles apart and occurring at the exact same time. He was also ordered to pay nearly $345,000 in restitution. According to the evidence presented at trial, from 1987 until 2014, Tamarin was a partner Advanced Urology Medical Offices (AUMO), which had offices in Torrance and West Los Angeles. From January 2009 until January 2013, at AUMO, where the majority of the patients were covered by Medicare, Tamarin billed Medicare for services he did not and could not have performed and also ordered medically unnecessary tests. Tamarin covered Kindred Hospital, a sub-acute medical center in Ladera Heights, for AUMO. Kindred is a facility designed for patients with serious medical problems and in need of long-term care, but for whom a traditional hospital setting is unnecessary. There, he billed for numerous patient visits that never happened and for services he never provided. The evidence presented at trial showed that on multiple occasions between 2009 and 2013, Tamarin purportedly was in two places miles apart at the same time he was treating patients in both locations. At his office at AUMO, Tamarin ordered medically unnecessary tests for his patients. In particular, he ordered two to three times the number of post-void residual (PVR) tests and renal ultrasounds for urology patients in comparison to his three medical partners. Tamarin ordered so many PVRs that the office’s medical assistants suggested that the office purchase a second PVR machine. Tamarin ordered these tests before speaking with or seeing a patient despite the fact that the tests themselves only were appropriate in limited medical circumstances.
