The former office manager of a Washington, D.C-based dental clinic was sentenced to a year in prison for defrauding the district's Medicaid program.
Mahsa Azimirad, of Rockville, Md., was the office manager of Universal Smiles. She was indicted in January 2019 and pleaded guilty in May to the Medicaid fraud that also involved Bilal Ahmed, DDS, who ran the practice.
According to an Oct. 1 news release from the U.S. State's Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, the two billed Medicaid for provisional crowns, a number of which were not provided to patients. The dental practice received nearly $5.4 million from Medicaid between Aug. 9, 2012, and Feb. 26, 2014. Of that amount, Dr. Ahmed pocketed about $4 million, and Ms. Azimirad pocketed more than $813,000.
Dr. Ahmed pleaded guilty in 2019 and is serving a concurrent sentence as part of a 16-year prison term for sexually assaulting patients between 2010 and 2014.
After serving her sentence, Ms. Azimirad will be placed on three years of supervised release and will have to pay $813,184 in restitution.