Houston, Texas, Doctor Convicted of Fraud

A 61-year-old physician in Houston, Texas, Dr. Ira Klein, whose specialty was treating patients with Hepatitis C will be spending more than 11 years in a federal prison for health care fraud and mail fraud.

The doctor was convicted back in November of 2006 for a total of 18 counts of mail fraud in addition to 26 counts of health care fraud. He had a scheme in place to defraud insurance companies to the tune of $10 million. He was sentenced by U. S. District Judge David Hittner to a total of 135 months in jail. When he gets out, he will be subject to three years of supervised release. He has also been ordered to pay $11,590,784 back to those he defrauded in restitution. He must also pay $10 million to the government.

It does not stop there. At his sentencing hearing, the Court found out that he had also obstructed justice by allegedly conspiring with other inmates to arrange the murder of a Special Agent of the FBI, Assistant United States Attorney prosecuting the case and his own wife. As part of the plot, he met with three inmates and discussed the plan with them. He then met with an un named individual and discussed arranging a payment in the amount of $250,000 to kill his wife and also and undetermined payment later on to kill the agent. He did wire $250,000 to the individual.

Unfortunately for the doctor, the person he made the arrangement with and wired the money to is an FBI agent

Before he pronounced sentence, the Judge made note of the fact that there is a pending indictment against the doctor in Florida in which he is accused of arson in an alleged attempt to kill his wife, He could also face charges in the plot to murder the Assistant United States Attorney and the FBI agent.

The scheme he created was that he billed for services he never provided to patients and when he did treat a patient, he billed the insurance companies for a costlier procedure. He also ordered a large volume of Hepatitis C medications, gave them to the patients to administer at home and then billed the insurance companies as if he or his staff were administering the drugs in his office.