A New York physician at the center of a massive COVID testing operation has admitted to turning the pandemic into a multimillion-dollar billing scam, pleading guilty on Friday to federal charges related to at least $24 million in bogus claims. Ali Rashan, the founder and CEO of ClearMD, pleaded a plea before U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer and is expected to be sentenced on September 22.
According to a news release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Rashan operated a network of ClearMD clinics in New York City from 2021 to 2023, submitting tens of thousands of claims to Medicare, Medicaid, the HRSA Uninsured Program, and private insurers. Prosecutors contend that claims were padded with assessment and management codes, as well as multiple COVID testing codes for treatments that patients never got, resulting in at least $24 million in lost revenue.
Court filings and previous reporting indicate a clinic culture in which employees were instructed to create fictitious progress notes and even construct software to manufacture test results and encounter material to support questionable claims. The pattern of invoicing several COVID test codes for a single visit and then fabricating fraudulent records to match was detailed in a local breakdown of the Rashan case…