Physician avoids jail in All Care clinic scam

[samanthajane13]

Defrauded Medicare with phony claims
By Dan Herbeck
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
July 28, 2009, 7:02 AM

A physician who helped operators of a crooked medical clinic defraud the federal government was put on probation for three years Monday by U. S. District Judge William M. Skretny.

Dr. Mikhail Strutsovskiy, 37, of Amherst, apologized for taking part in a scam involving the fraudulent, and now defunct, All Care medical clinics in Amherst and Kenmore.

In addition to the probation sentence, Skretny ordered Strutsovskiy to reimburse $131,138 to the Medicare system, Assistant U. S. Attorney John E. Rogowski said.

In the years 2003 and 2004, the prosecutor said, Strutsovskiy helped the All Care clinics cheat the government by signing numerous phony documents certifying that he had provided treatment to patients.

Strutsovskiy never actually saw some of the patients, and at times was hundreds of miles away when the clinics claimed to have treated the patients, Rogowski said.

Stopping short of sending Strutsovskiy to prison, Skretny noted that the criminal case has already cost the doctor a $200,000-a-year job with a Geneva hospital and may cost him his medical license.

Two other defendants who ran the clinics — Mikhail Solovey, also known as Robert Stein, and Marina Kats — have already served prison time in the case.

Authorities said the clinics cheated government programs out of more than $440,000.

Strutsovskiy pleaded guilty to a felony charge of filing a false statement relating to health care.


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[samanthajane13]

Two plead guilty in health care fraud
Physician, teacher called ‘unscrupulous’
By Dan Herbeck
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: March 04, 2009, 8:41 AM

Mikhail Strutsovskiy, of Amherst, is a licensed physician who got paid for performing medical services at Buffalo-area clinics when he was actually hundreds of miles away in Baltimore.

Konstantinos Arabatzis, of Allegany, is a health care teacher who got paid hundreds of thousand of dollars for classes he never taught.

Both men pleaded guilty in Buffalo’s federal court in cases investigated by the Western New York Health Care Fraud Task Force.

Assistant U. S. Attorney John E. Rogowski cited the two cases Tuesday as examples of health care fraud that costs taxpayers and businesses billions of dollars nationwide each year.

“As the demand for health care services increases, the opportunities for unscrupulous providers also increases,” said Rogowski, who prosecuted both cases.

Both of the scam artists took felony guilty pleas this week before District Judge William M. Skretny.

• Strutsovskiy, 37, was part of a medical clinic scam that has already led to criminal convictions and sentences against two people— Mikhail Solovey and Marina Kats— who ran the fraudulent All Care medical clinics in Amherst and Kenmore.

“Solovey and Kats ordered unnecessary tests and treatments based on profit, and not on the needs of patients,” Rogowski said. “Strutsovskiy falsely certified that the tests and treatments were medically necessary. [He also] falsely certified that he personally rendered physical therapy treatments when unqualified and unlicensed individuals provided the treatment.”

During the years 2003 and 2004, Strutsovskiy admitted he often traveled from Baltimore — where he was completing his medical training—to Buffalo to sign bogus medical and insurance claims.

The doctor’s criminal activity enabled Solovey and Kats to illegally bill the Medicare system $131,413, authorities said. Strutsovskiy will be sentenced July 29 for filing false health care statements.

• Arabatzis, 47, who ran a company called C&K Preventative Health in Allegany, admitted that he fraudulently billed HealthNow New York, the parent company of BlueCross BlueShield, $800,000 in the years 2003 through 2008.

The company run by Arabatzis ran wellness, nutrition and stress management classes at school districts and in workplaces throughout the Southern Tier, but Arabatzis routinely submitted bills to HealthNow for classes that were either incomplete or never actually took place, authorities said.

Officials of HealthNow New York said they contacted federal agents about the scam after conducting their own internal investigation. Arabatzis is scheduled to be sentenced for health care fraud July 28.

Anyone with information about health care fraud in Western New York can call the Buffalo FBI office at 856-7800, Rogowski said.


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