By Khalida Sarwari
A pair of doctors from Saratoga have been charged with committing healthcare fraud and money laundering.
A federal grand jury has indicted the doctors, Vilasini Ganesh and Gregory Belcher, with healthcare fraud, conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to acting U.S. Attorney Brian Stretch and FBI special agent in charge John Bennett.
Ganesh, 46, a family practitioner and Belcher, 54, an orthopedic surgeon, are accused of engaging in a scheme between 2009 and 2014 to defraud insurance companies administering healthcare benefit programs. According to the indictment, the partners used their medical practice, the Campbell Medical Group, to illegally funnel money to themselves by submitting false and fraudulent claims to the insurance companies and hiding that they submitted those claims.
Ganesh is separately accused of submitting claims for services that she knew were not payable by including false codes that artificially inflated both the seriousness of the patient’s condition as well as the time that the physician spent examining the patient, false diagnoses that didn’t correspond with the true health and presentation of the patient, claims for days when the patient had not been seen by the provider and representations that the patients were seen by another physician provider who is no longer affiliated with Ganesh and her practice, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
To keep up the scheme, the indictment alleges that Ganesh would misrepresent, conceal and hide her wrongdoings or direct her subordinates to do as such. When she was approached by representatives from the insurance companies or the patients themselves, for example, to provide documentation or additional information to substantiate the submitted claims, she’d either forbid her office staff from speaking to anyone about the claims or she would just submit the false information, according to the DOJ.
She is accused of working with Belcher to submit hundreds of claims for reimbursement from the insurance companies for days that were weekends when their practice was closed, days on which the patients denied they were seen and days when the patients could not have been seen by Ganesh or her staff because either the patient or the doctor was not physically present.
The doctors are suspected of using billing codes that indicated either one of them had spent more than 24 hours in a single day seeing patients. The pair allegedly maintained multiple bank accounts through which they tried to hide their illegally obtained money.
They’ve been charged with one count of healthcare fraud conspiracy, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and six counts of money laundering. Ganesh was additionally charged with five counts of healthcare fraud and five counts of false statements relating to healthcare matters. Their first court appearance was on May 24 following their arrest earlier that day in Saratoga.
If convicted, the doctors face a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000, plus restitution for the healthcare fraud conspiracy charges. They face 20 years imprisonment and a fine of at least $500,000 for the money laundering charges.
They are free on bond and await further hearings.
