Clinic owner Ankur Roy heads to prison over fraud, pays $2.5 million
Fraduster designed scheme to pay off debt and student loans.
Ankur Roy designed scheme to pay off debt and student loans.
The former owner of a physical therapy provider in Illinois has been sentenced to federal prison and ordered to repay $2.5 million over a scheme he designed to pay off debt and student loans, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois.
Ankur Roy, 38, of Miami Beach, Florida, was ordered to forfeit more than $2.5 million in proceeds he and two co-defendants gained by submitted false claims to Medicare and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, according to the U.S. Attorney.
[Also: Running list of notable 2015 healthcare frauds]
Roy owned and operated Selectcare Health, an outpatient physical and respiratory therapy provider in Park Ridge and Skokie, Illinois. He proposed the scheme to two co-defendants as a means to extricate them from debt, and designed it to avoid raising red flags with Medicare and Blue Cross Blue Shield’s fraud detection systems, according to court documents.
Medicare and Blue Cross Blue Shield paid the defendants more than $2.5 million in false claims for services never provided, according to the U.S. Attorney. Roy took over $600,000 for his own purposes, including for personal expenses, paying off credit card bills and repaying his student loan, according to the U.S. Attorney.
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A jury convicted him on five counts in July 2014.
In late May, he was sentenced to 75 months in prison followed by three years of supervision after his release. He must surrender to the Federal Bureau of Prisons on July 15, 2015.
In 2013, his two co-defendants pled guilty: Dipen Desai was sentenced to 27 months’ imprisonment; Akash Patel is scheduled to be sentenced in July.
Twitter: @SusanMorseHFN
