MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — Maryam E. Zarei, a 47-year-old dentist from Glen Allen, faces up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to healthcare fraud.
Zarei ran the three-part $783,000 scheme out of Atlee Station Family Dentistry in Mechanicsville, according to the United States Attorney’s Office.
“Zarei fraudulently billed Medicaid and the insurers for services never rendered, including a variety of purported services when Zarei was in fact out of the country,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. “Zarei [also] billed the insurers for services using inappropriate billing codes that resulted in higher bills than were justified by the actual service performed. These included, for example, upcoding of preventive resins to costlier resin-based composites, and upcoding routine extractions to surgical extractions. Third, Zarei billed insurance companies for services performed after termination of the patients’ insurance coverage and then backdated the claims documents to make it appear that the services had occurred when the insurance policies were in effect.”
The scheme ran from 2013 to 2016, according to investigators.
Zarei is scheduled to be sentenced March 16, 2018.
