New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced the sentencing of Imran Shams, 66, of California, to eight and one third to twenty-five years in state prison for his role in a scheme that wrongfully billed Medicaid millions of dollars for fraudulent medical testing services. On March 6, 2020, Shams pleaded guilty to Grand Larceny in the First and Second Degrees and agreed to pay restitution of $7 million. Shams is currently serving a 13-year federal prison sentence following convictions in the United States District Courts for the Eastern District of New York and the Central District of California for conduct related to his New York scheme, as well as other health care fraud schemes.
“When criminal organizations abuse our health care system, the most vulnerable patients suffer,” said Attorney General James. “Imram Shams and his accomplices ran a despicable scheme that used vulnerable New Yorkers to steal millions of dollars meant to provide care for low-income patients. My office will continue to go after those who try to profit by undermining the Medicaid program and bring bad actors to justice.”
Shams’ sentencing is the culmination of a multi-year investigation and prosecution of the illegal activity of Multi-Specialty, a fraudulent medical clinic secretly owned by Shams, who was banned from billing Medicaid as a provider due to a previous health care fraud conviction. Multi-Specialty illegally paid Medicaid recipients a kickback of $20 to $50 to enter the clinic and submit to unnecessary and usually fraudulent evaluations and tests. These were often administered by untrained and incompetent individuals recruited to dress like health care professionals in order to lend an appearance of legitimacy to the fraud.
Soliciting Medicaid recipients by offering to pay them to accept medical services paid for by Medicaid is unlawful under state and federal law. After bribing recipients to enter his clinic, Shams used licensed health care providers complicit in the scheme to submit fraudulent claims to Medicaid and to Medicaid-funded Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) for unnecessary or nonexistent services. Shams also received millions of dollars in kickbacks for exclusively referring patients for diagnostic testing, regardless of medical need, to companies owned by other participants in the scheme, Tea Kaganovich and Ramazi Mitaishvili, both of Brooklyn.
Shams was sentenced today to eight and one third to twenty-five years in prison, to run concurrent with his federal sentence, by Judge Michele Rodney of the New York County Supreme Court, and is the last defendant to be sentenced in this scheme. His sentence follows the convictions and sentencings of Kaganovich and Mitaishvili on charges of Grand Larceny in the First Degree. Both received a sentence of one and a half to four and a half years in state prison in November 2023. In addition, a radiologist complicit in the scheme, Bernard Bentley of East Hampton, New York received a sentence of three years of probation on charges of Grand Larceny in the Second Degree for his role in fraudulently billing Medicaid over eight million dollars for fraudulent diagnostic testing services.
Kaganovich and Mitaishvili were prosecuted in a related criminal case in the Eastern District of New York, and as part of that case, were ordered to pay over $18 million of restitution to the New York Medicaid Fraud Restitution Fund, and it is expected that more than seven million dollars in assets seized from those defendants as part of the federal case will be remitted to New York.
The Attorney General would like to thank the New York State Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG), the U.S. Department of Justice Medicare Strike Force, which operates from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York; the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General (HHS OIG); the New York City Human Resources Administration, Medicaid Provider Investigations and Audit Unit, and HealthFirst for their assistance and cooperation in this investigation.
Senior Detective Stanislav Tabakov investigated the case with the assistance of Detective Supervisor Dominick DiGennaro. Senior Auditor Investigator Lisandra Defex conducted the financial analysis with the assistance of MFCU New York City Regional Chief Auditor Investigator Thomasina Smith and Deputy Regional Chief Auditor Jonathan Romano.
Special Assistant Attorney General Chase Ruddy prosecuted the criminal case under the supervision of NYC Regional Director Twan V. Bounds. Deputy Chief of MFCU’s Civil Enforcement Division, Konrad F. Payne, negotiated monetary settlements attendant to each defendant’s guilty pleas that recovered millions of dollars for the state. Alee Scott is the Chief of MFCU’s Civil Enforcement Division. Thomas O’Hanlon is MFCU’s Chief of Criminal Investigations. MFCU is led by Director Amy Held and Assistant Deputy Attorney General Paul Mahoney. The Division of Criminal Justice is led by Chief Deputy Attorney General José Maldonado under the oversight of First Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Levy.
MFCU defends the public by addressing Medicaid provider fraud and protecting nursing home residents from abuse and neglect. If an individual believes they have information about Medicaid provider fraud or about an incident of abuse or neglect of a nursing home resident, they can file a confidential complaint online or call the MFCU hotline at (800) 771-7755. If the situation is an emergency, please call 911.
New York MFCU’s total funding for federal fiscal year (FY) 2025 is $70,502,916. Of that total, 75 percent, or $52,877,188, is funded from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The remaining 25 percent, totaling $17,625,728 for FY 2025, is funded by New York State.