Valley doctor bilks Medicare out of more than $3 million

A medical doctor  who ran a  clinic in the San Fernando Valley pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of healthcare fraud involving bilking the federal Medicare social insurance program out of more than $3 million, according to a statement issued by the the U.S. attorney’s office Central District of California.

Pezhman Ebrahimzadeh, known as  Pez Abrahams, claimed reimbursement for procedures he never performed and sometimes involving patients he never met, authorities said. And in at least one case, the purported patient was dead.

The statement said Ebrahimzadeh owns the Winnetka Medical Group, a cosmetic healthcare clinic that operates under the name Health & Beauty Clinic. The 50-year-old  Calabasas resident offered cosmetic treatments involving radiofrequency lasers and liposuction at the clinic, authorities said.

Ebrahimzadeh would obtain the beneficiary information of some patients whom he never saw or treated and submit bogus bills to Medicare, claiming he had performed expensive procedures on them, such as “revascularization, ablation of a bone tumor or the placement of a radiotherapy catheter in a breast,” the statement said. It said Ebrahimzadeh didn’t have equipment needed to perform revascularizations or placement of radiotherapy catheters. But between September 2008 and April 2012 he submitted $7.5 million in fraudulent claims and Medicare reimbursed him a little over $3 million.

Ebrahimzadeh is scheduled to be sentenced May 20. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison but a  plea agreement, in which the physician has agreed to repay the millions he stole, could reduce the sentence to four to five years,  authorities said. A judge will decide the sentence.

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-- Ann M. Simmons in Santa Clarita