Has to forfeit over $2 million, too.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: Dr. Ashok Kumar Babaria, 64, an Indian American radiologist who owned and operated a diagnostic testing center in Orange, New Jersey, has been sentenced to 46 months in jail for an lengthy and wide-ranging cash-for-patients scheme with doctors who referred patients to him.
Babaria, of Moorestown, NJ, had pleaded guilty to charges two years ago in the case which saw many other Indian American physicians caught in the federal dragnet and charged with various degrees of offenses.
US District Judge Claire C Cecchi also sentenced Babaria to three years of supervised release, ordered him to forfeit over $2 million and fined him an additional $25,000.
Babaria had pleaded guilty earlier to one count of offering and paying doctors and other healthcare providers illegal cash kickbacks for patient referrals in violation of the federal healthcare anti-kickback statute.
According to documents filed in court, from 2008 through 2011, Babaria was the medical director and owner of Orange Community MRI LLC. The facility provided diagnostic testing services, such as MRIs, CAT Scans, ultrasounds, echocardiograms, and DEXA scans. During that time, Orange MRI made nearly $2 million in corrupt revenues from Medicare and Medicaid billings for tests performed on patients who were referred to Orange MRI by doctors who were paid cash kickbacks for those referrals.
Babaria negotiated, approved, and paid kickbacks to physicians for each diagnostic test referred and provided cash to his subordinates to pay those doctors kickbacks for their referrals. Babaria performed a variety of specific acts, including personally paying a physician kickbacks of $75 for each of the doctor’s MRI referrals to Orange MRI over two years.
Babaria admitted in court to several of these individual acts, including that in 2009, he approved a kickback arrangement in which Orange MRI would pay a specific doctor roughly $100 for each of his MRI referrals, and the doctor in turn agreed to refer as many as 20 MRIs to Orange MRI each month. Babaria admitted approving in 2009 a kickback arrangement in which would pay a specific doctor $75 for each of the physician’s MRI referrals and $25 for each of the physician’s ultrasound and DEXA scan referrals.