Clinic CEO sentenced for health care fraud
Tri-County medical group scheme involved unnecessary opioid injections
A West Bloomfield resident and chief executive officer of a group of medical providers was ordered to spend the next 15 years in prison and pay a multimillion dollar restitution for health care fraud and related crimes.
Mashiyat Rashid, CEO of Tri-County Wellness Group operating in Michigan and Ohio, was sentenced March 3 for one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, and one count of money laundering. He pleaded guilty to the charges in 2018.
Rashid is one of 22 defendants, including 12 physicians, convicted so far in the fraud scheme. Three of the physicians from Oakland County — Joseph Betro and Mohammed Zahoor, both of Novi, and Tariq Omar of West Bloomfield — were found guilty in February 2020 following a 4-week trial in federal court in Detroit.
According to a news release from the Department of Justice, Rashid developed and approved a corporate policy for Tri-County Wellness Group to administer unnecessary injections to patients in exchange for prescriptions of unnecessary opioids, totaling more than six million doses. Proceeds from the fraud were used to purchase courtside tickets to the NBA Finals, luxury cars, real estate and jewelry, and to fund private jet flights, the news releases stated.
Rashid’s sentence includes an order to pay $51 million in restitution to Medicare as well as forfeiture of property obtained from the fraud scheme, including more than $11.5 million, commercial and residential real estate, and a Detroit Pistons season ticket membership.
Court documents show that from 2008 to 2016, Rashid was CEO of the TriCounty Wellness Group, where its clinics would offer patients prescriptions for Oxycodone 30 mg., but in exchange forced them to get unnecessary spinal injections. Some of the patients were legitimate pain sufferers while others were drug dealers or addicts.
Tri-County received more money for the injections than any other medical clinic in the United States, the news release stated, intentionally targeting the Medicare program and recruiting patients from soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
Testimony from the trial of Rashid’s co-defendants indicated that some patients experienced more pain from the injections than from the pain they had come to the clinic to be treated for, and that their screams could be heard throughout the facilities. Some patients developed open holes in their back and other adverse conditions, the news release stated.
Other evidence presented at trial showed Rashid only hired doctors “who were willing to disregard patient care in the pursuit of money. Rashid incentivized the physicians to follow the Tri-County protocol of offering opioid prescriptions and administering unnecessary injections by offering to split the Medicare reimbursements for these lucrative procedures. The specific injections used had nothing to do with the medical needs of the patients but were instead selected to be administered because they were the highest-paying injection procedures,” the news release stated.
IRS Criminal Investigations, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General and the FBI conducted the investigation. Assistant Chief Jacob Foster of the National Rapid Response Strike Force and Trial Attorney Tom Tynan of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section prosecuted the case.