Fake Doc Pleads Guilty in $1.2M Fraud Scheme

A fake doctor who treated more than 1,000 people in two states, collected about $1.2 million for the "care" he provided, and then tried to sell their health information, pleaded guilty in federal court in Atlanta this week to charges related to the scheme, the Department of Justice said.

Federal prosecutors said that Matthew Paul Brown, 30, formerly of Atlanta, GA, and Nashville, TN, worked with licensed physicians in both states from November 2009 to April 2011 and used their provider numbers to collect about $1.2 million in false claims with Medicare/Medicaid and private insurance companies.

Brown, who has never held a license to practice medicine, would administer the care in the physicians' offices and at health fairs, with the physicians agreeing to pay Brown between 50% and 85% of the take. There is no indication that the physicians who worked with Brown were aware that he was a fraud, prosecutors said.

Brown was indicted in April. He pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta to charges that include 17 counts of healthcare fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Brown also pleaded guilty to wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information, a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Prosecutors said Brown tried to sell a spreadsheet containing healthcare information on the people he had treated to an undercover FBI agent, who Brown thought was a potential investor in a business Brown was starting. The HIPAA charge also carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, prosecutors said. 

Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 22.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta has tried to notify the people treated by Brown, but federal prosecutors said they don't believe that any of them were harmed. Brown bought the needles and allergy shots he used from a retail pharmacy. There is no evidence that he ever used unsterile needles.

"The reckless conduct displayed by the defendant not only displayed a total disregard for the patients that he was improperly and illegally treating, but also for those individuals who could have legitimately benefitted from the federal Medicaid/Medicare funds," Brian D. Lamkin, special agent in charge, FBI Atlanta Field Office, said in a media release.