On February 5, 2025, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the sentencing of Imran Shams, 66, of California, to eight and one third to twenty-five years in state prison for his role in a scheme that wrongfully billed Medicaid millions of dollars for fraudulent medical testing services. On March 6, 2020, Shams pleaded guilty to Grand Larceny in the First and Second Degrees and agreed to pay restitution of $7 million. Shams is currently serving a 13-year federal prison sentence following convictions in the United States District Courts for the Eastern District of New York and the Central District of California for conduct related to his New York scheme, as well as other healthcare fraud schemes.
Shams’ sentencing is the culmination of a multi-year investigation and prosecution of the illegal activity of Multi-Specialty, a fraudulent medical clinic secretly owned by Shams, who was banned from billing Medicaid as a provider due to a previous healthcare fraud conviction. Multi-Specialty illegally paid Medicaid recipients a kickback of $20 to $50 to enter the clinic and submit to unnecessary and usually fraudulent evaluations and tests. These were often administered by untrained and incompetent individuals recruited to dress like healthcare professionals in order to lend an appearance of legitimacy to the fraud.
