By: Derek Hawkins//November 5, 2018//
7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: United States of America v. Omeed Memar
Case No.: 17-3098
Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and BAUER and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.
Focus: Sufficiency of Evidence
Anyone who has encountered medical billing, either from the provider side or the patient side, would agree that it could kindly be described as complex. But that does not mean that the rules are impossible to decipher, or that anything goes. There is a line between honest billing and fraud, and in the present case, the government charged Dr. Omeed Memar with crossing it.
The government focused on eight cases in which Memar diagnosed patients with a precancerous condition known as actinic keratosis, which produces distinctive skin lesions. He treated the patients in question by applying intense pulsed light (“IPL”) to supposed lesions on their faces and then billing their insurance providers for the procedures. The government suspected that there were no such lesions, and that in‐ stead this was a ruse to trick insurance companies into reimbursing the charges for cosmetic procedures outside the scope of the policies. A jury agreed with the government. On appeal, Memar primarily insists that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict. We are not persuaded: we see ample evidence in this record from which the jury could find that Me‐ mar’s conduct was fraudulent. We find no reversible error elsewhere either, and so the convictions must stand.
Affirmed