A California man was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for conspiring to conceal his involvement in operating a laboratory and billing Medicare approximately $234 million for various lab tests, including COVID-19 and respiratory pathogen panel tests, despite his decades-long exclusion from the Medicare program. According to court documents, Imran Shams, 65, of Glendale, was convicted of Medicare and Medicaid fraud in separate 1990 and 2001 cases in New York and California, respectively. After each conviction, he was excluded from participation in Medicare and all federal healthcare programs, and advised by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) that he had to submit a written application to be considered for reinstatement in federal healthcare programs. Shams never sought reinstatement, yet he continued to operate healthcare clinics in New York that billed federal healthcare programs. In November 2017, Shams pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pay and receive healthcare kickbacks and other charges in the Eastern District of New York related to his operation of these clinics.
