An employee of a Houston dental clinic was sentenced to federal prison after being convicted of conspiring to pay and receive health care kickbacks and payment of kickbacks to marketers, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
A federal jury deliberated for an hour after a three-day trial before finding Ifeanyi Ozoh, 54, guilty on all counts Feb. 14, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Alamdar S. Hamdani said in a news release Wednesday.
U.S. District Chief Judge Randy Crane sentenced Ozoh to six years in federal prison, which will be followed immediately by three years of supervised release. Ozoh also was ordered to pay $4.9 million in restitution to Medicaid.
During the sentencing hearing, the judge was told Ozoh was key to the kickback scheme in which he bribed marketers and parents to bring Medicaid-insured children to a “sham” dental clinic, the news release said.
Authorities said Ozoh worked at a dental clinic known as Floss Family Dentalcare Center from January 2020 to February 2021.
The jury head during the trial that Ozoh paid marketers $20 to $100 for each Medicaid-insured child referred to Floss. The marketers testified Ozoh secretly paid them in cash, away from any witnesses, and sometimes put illegal kickback payments on top of a vending machine down the hall from the clinic.
One clinic manager testified that she repeatedly told Ozoh that paying marketers was illegal, the news release said. The jury also heard that Ozoh paid over $163,000 in bribes to marketers. There were bonuses for reaching a quota of patients, officials said.
Authorities said Floss billed Medicaid over $6 million from 2020 to 2021 and received over $4 million on those claims. The news release said that in addition to kickbacks paid to marketers, some dental services were not provided.
A representative testified during the trial that Medicaid prohibits the payment of kickbacks for referrals of medical services.
Ozoh was allowed to stay on bond and will voluntarily surrender later to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility, which had yet to be determined.
The FBI, the Texas Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the Department of Health and Human Services – Office of Inspector General investigated the case, which Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kathryn Olson and Lauren Valenti prosecuted.
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