Two doctors from the St. Louis area have been sentenced in the past month for federal health care crimes in two separate cases.
Prosecutors with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri said Dr. Asim Muhammad Ali, 54, admitted in 2024 to providing health care services to Medicaid patients of Psych Care Consultants, LLC, which is owned and controlled by psychiatrist Dr. Mohd Azfar Malik, 71.
Ali stated that he used Malik’s identity and Medicare billing number for these visits, which were intended to involve a cognitive function exam, but that he did not see these patients in person but rather called and asked them a series of questions.
Malik acknowledged filing false claims to Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurers for in-person services while out of the state or country. In one case, Dr. Ali delivered an intravenous ketamine infusion while Dr. Malik was in Hawaii, although Ali was already under federal prosecution and did not have the necessary registration to administer restricted medications.
In April, Malik pled guilty to two counts of making false representations about health care. In addition to his guilty plea, Malik agreed to surrender his DEA registrations, which allow him to prescribe or administer restricted medications.
In August, Malik was sentenced to five years probation, a $20,000 fine, and $19,442 in reparations.
Meanwhile, Ali pled guilty on May 22 to one count of conspiracy to illegally distribute controlled substances and keep a drug-related premise in the 2024 case.
Ali pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to illegally distribute controlled substances, one count of illegally prescribing controlled medicines, one count of paying illegal kickbacks for referrals, and one count of filing false claims in an unrelated 2020 case last year.
In that case, Ali was implicated in a scheme to pay kickbacks for urine samples forwarded to one of his companies for testing. He also admitted to writing prescriptions for restricted narcotics for people who looked to be selling or giving away their medications. Ali also issued prescriptions for prohibited medications for patients at another of his enterprises. He did not see the patients on the days they received their prescriptions and rarely examined whether they had a real medical need to be given controlled medications.
On Monday, a federal judge sentenced Ali to 70 months in jail and ordered him to pay a total of $1,846,818 in fees for both instances.
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