Two men – one of them from Buford – were sentenced Monday for their roles in a scheme to defraud Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurance companies by submitting over $522 million in fraudulent claims for medically unnecessary genetic tests that were obtained through the payment of illegal kickbacks and bribes.
Reyad Salahaldeen, 57, of Buford was sentenced to 151 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud. Mohamad Mustafa, 28, of Duluth was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to paying health care kickbacks.
“Under the guise of health care, these two fraudsters attempted to steal more than half a billion dollars from taxpayers through a web of sham contracts, lies, and bribes,” said Colin M. McDonald, Assistant Attorney for the National Fraud Enforcement Division.
From 2018 through August 2020, Salahaldeen and co-conspirators paid kickbacks and bribes to a network of purported “marketers” who targeted individuals covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance and induced them to provide their health insurance information and DNA samples in order to obtain costly genetic tests designed to predict the risk of cancer, adverse drug reactions, and other conditions.
The four laboratories billed approximately $522 million in false and fraudulent claims, of which Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers paid approximately $84 million.
Eleven of Salahaldeen and Mustafa’s co-conspirators previously pleaded guilty and were sentenced.