The Justice Department announced its 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown on June 23, charging 455 defendants, including 90 physicians and other licensed medical professionals, in schemes involving more than $6.5 billion in false claims. Spanning 56 federal districts and 45 states and territories, the action marks the largest coordinated healthcare fraud enforcement effort in the department’s history, resulting in the seizure of more than $182 million in cash and assets and CMS suspensions or billing revocations for more than 2,400 providers.
The national sweep is just one piece of a broader pattern. Over the past 30 days, physicians across the country have faced their own individual fraud charges, settlements and sentences — from a Texas cardiologist accused of clearing student athletes’ heart screenings in seconds to a Massachusetts physician sentenced for billing insurers for equipment never provided to patients.
Here are eight cases Becker’s has reported on in the last month.
1. A Frederick, Md. oncology practice and its physician owner Mouhamad Bazzi, MD, have agreed to pay $1.45 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations of billing Medicare, Medicaid and the VA for chemotherapy drugs that were never paid for or never administered to patients. Progressive Oncology & Hematology and its owner Mouhamad Bazzi, MD, allegedly submitted claims for reimbursement for drugs obtained at no cost through charitable organizations or grant programs, split drug wastage from single-use vials across multiple patients while billing as if each received their own vial, and billed for chemotherapy drugs that were prescribed but never administered at the practice.
2. Fort Worth, Texas cardiologist Jason Finkelstein, MD, has been charged in an $89 million healthcare fraud scheme involving medically unnecessary cardiovascular screening tests on college student athletes, including one who died of sudden cardiac arrest approximately 24 days after the physician allegedly approved his test results as normal in about 11 seconds. Dr. Finkelstein faces charges of healthcare fraud and conspiracy in what prosecutors describe as a yearslong scheme that preyed on the fears of athletes that they could die on playing fields of sudden cardiac arrest. Dr. Finkelstein was a full-time physician with Advanced Heart Care in Decatur, Texas, and also served as medical director of a Boca Raton-based cardiovascular testing company that sent technicians to college campuses across the country.
3. Two urologists have agreed to pay a combined $2.2 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations of performing medically unnecessary surgical procedures involving an implantable neurostimulation device and billing Medicare for the unnecessary procedures. Robert Simon, MD, an Englewood, N.J.-based urologist, will pay $1.1 million and Nicole Fleischmann, MD, a White Plains, N.Y.-based urologist, will pay $1.1 million. Both admitted to causing Medicare to pay claims for implantations of the InterStim device without completing required preoperative testing.
4. Tennessee clinic owner and physician Angela Moss, MD, has been charged with prescribing more than 5.6 million pills and doses of controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose over more than eight years. Dr. Moss owned and operated Gordonsville (Tenn.) Clinic and allegedly prescribed excessive and inappropriate quantities and combinations of controlled substances to patients, continuing to do so even after receiving warnings from the Tennessee Department of Health about her prescribing practices.
5. Des Moines, Iowa, plastic surgeon Eugene Cherny, MD, has been named in a federal False Claims Act complaint alleging he submitted fraudulent invoices to Medicare to inflate reimbursements for skin substitute products used to treat wounds following Mohs surgery. Dr. Cherny, owner of Heartland Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, allegedly obtained two invoices from a skin substitute distributor for each product he purchased, one reflecting the inflated list price he never paid and one reflecting the actual lower price, and submitted only the falsified higher-priced invoices when Medicare requested documentation.
6. Muna Orra, MD, of Westlake, Ohio, has been sentenced to five years of probation for her role in a healthcare fraud conspiracy that fraudulently billed Medicare for more than $1.8 million in medically unnecessary durable medical equipment and genetic testing. Dr. Orra worked as an independent contractor for a Georgia-based telemedicine company between February 2018 and September 2021, signing pre-populated physicians’ orders for braces and genetic tests without meaningfully reviewing patient records.
7. Jaynier Moya, MD, co-owner and principal investigator at Pines Care Research Center in Pembroke Pines, Fla., and three staff members at a medical research center have been charged with falsifying clinical trial data for prospective new drug treatments. Dr. Moya and three clinical research coordinators allegedly fabricated testing data and falsified records beginning no later than 2019 to make it appear that human subjects had taken study medications and undergone required testing when they had not. The defendants allegedly used identification documents from individuals who did not actually participate in the trials to create false records and submitted falsified data into clinical trial database systems used for FDA drug evaluation.
8. Pankaj Merchia, MD, 52, a former Brookline, Mass. physician has been sentenced to 58 months in prison for healthcare fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. Dr. Merchia was convicted in January 2026 on multiple counts stemming from two distinct fraud schemes. In the first, Dr. Merchia billed insurance companies for monthly rentals of CPAP and BiPAP machines for patients he had not treated since at least 2011, in some cases for devices that had been returned to him. In the second, he defrauded an insurance company out of more than $390,000 by submitting claims for a CPAP machine provided to his brother through a newly created medical business after being told the insurer would not cover treatment rendered by a family member.
At the Becker’s 32nd Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs, taking place October 29-31 in Chicago, ASC leaders, surgeons and healthcare executives will explore strategies to drive growth, enhance operational performance, navigate reimbursement challenges and prepare for the future of ambulatory surgery. Apply for complimentary registration now.