Rockville woman to serve prison term over D.C. Medicaid fraud

Authorities say she was part of dental office’s false-billing scheme

October 4, 2021 2:40 p.m.

A Rockville woman was sentenced Friday to 12 months in prison for defrauding the District of Columbia’s Medicaid program out of more than $813,000 through false billing, authorities said.

Mahsa Azimirad, 41, was the office manager for Universal Smiles, a D.C.-based dental practice, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for D.C.

Azimirad was indicted in January 2019, along with Bilal Ahmed, the dentist who ran the practice, according to a press release from the U.S. attorney’s office. Azimirad pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in May 2021 to health care fraud.

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The press release says Azimirad and Ahmed defrauded D.C. Medicaid, a health care benefits program, by billing for thousands of provisional crowns even though “a significant number” were not provided to patients.

From Aug. 9, 2012, to Feb. 26, 2014, D.C. Medicaid paid Universal Smiles about $5.4 million for provisional crowns. Of that amount, Azimirad received about $813,000.

The U.S. attorney’s office said Ahmed pleaded guilty in 2019 to a federal health care fraud charge.

The press release said Ahmed also pleaded guilty in 2017 to sexually abusing five former dental patients and one former employee and improperly touching another former employee, all between 2014 and 2017. He was sentenced to 16 ½ years in prison and is serving a concurrent sentence for the fraud charge.

As part of the sentence imposed Friday, Azimirad will be on three years of supervised release after she gets out of prison. She was ordered to pay $813,184 in restitution.

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