Daniel J. Castro, MD was sentenced to five years in federal prison, two years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $1,972,293.74 in restitution to victims of his criminal conduct, including the Medicare and Medicaid programs, numerous private health insurers, Bronson Hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, and certain of his former patients. On April 3, 2023, Dr. Castro pleaded guilty to making a false statement related to healthcare matters. At his sentencing, Dr. Castro did not contest that he engaged in schemes to defraud healthcare benefit programs from February 2015 to May 2017 as alleged in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury. Those schemes included performing medically unnecessary sinus surgeries, which frequently involved falsifying medical records about his patients’ symptoms and the findings of CT scans to make it appear the surgeries were justified. Dr. Castro also defrauded healthcare insurers by billing excisions of single lymph nodes, submandibular glands, and other glands of the neck as if he performed modified radical or selective neck dissections, which are complex and higher-paying procedures for cancer of the head and neck.
