Apologies to Kevin, MD, here’s another in the Doctors Gone Wild series:
Top Ten Insurance Fraud Cases – Fiscal Year 2007
Ira Klein, a former doctor from Houston, developed several schemes to defraud health insurers, including billing for services not rendered, unbundling pharmaceutical drugs and selling them at a substantial profit and up-coding. Klein was convicted in federal court on 44 counts of mail fraud and sentenced to serve 135 months in prison for his part in defrauding health insurers of more than $10 million dollars. Prior to his Texas court appearance, Klien was arrested in Florida for setting fire to a $3.2 million dollar house he purchased for his wife. Then while awaiting trial in a Texas jail, Klein attempted to execute a murder-for-hire plot against the federal prosecutor, FBI agent and wife number six. It was unfortunate for Klein who lost another $250,000 after the government forfeited the money he wired to pay for the murder-for-hire plot. Authorities also seized in excess of $10 million of Klein’s assets; those funds will be used to offset the court ordered restitution of $11 million dollars.
10 million? That’s a lot of procedures, and a lot of bills. I’m not surprised this got investigated.
Via Sleepless in Midland who had a more personal response.
He got an honorable mention in a Barron’s stock picking contest back in the ’80s. And at one point in his career he advertised his services as a forensic expert — I think it was in the Texas Bar Journal. He was smart and articulate, and maybe he thought he was too smart to get caught.
Doctors do schemes all the time. All the unneeded testing to make an extra few dollars