New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that a jury found Payam Toobian, MD of Kings Point, New York, and his company, America’s Imaging Center, Inc., guilty on charges related to running a kickback scheme that defrauded Medicaid and subjected patients to invasive procedures they did not need. In August 2022, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) indicted Toobian, and today he was found guilty of Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, Health Care Fraud in the Third Degree, four of eight counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, and two counts of violating the Social Services Law statute prohibiting the payment of kickbacks, all felony charges. From January 2006 to August 2017, Toobian ran a kickback scheme in which he gave gift cards and cash to two physicians in exchange for the physicians’ referral of patients. In addition, from January 2014 to August 2017, Toobian directed his employees to add additional, unordered radiological procedures to orders submitted by referring physicians to increase the amount of money received from Medicaid.
Toobian defrauded Medicaid and subjected patients to medically unnecessary and often invasive radiological testing without the direction, consent, or approval of the referring physicians responsible for the underlying care of those patients. The additional tests included MRIs of the brain, cervical spine, and lumbar spine, all “with contrast,” which required subjecting patients to unnecessary and invasive injections. Toobian then directed his staff to submit claims for payment to Medicaid for those medically unnecessary tests.
