CHICAGO, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- A Chicago-area cardiologist recently sentenced for Medicare fraud will pay $20 million for related civil claims, the U.S. attorney announced Wednesday.
Sushil Sheth has agreed to pay the federal government $20 million to settle allegations of fraudulent billing between 2002 and 2007, said Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
A federal False Claims Act suit filed in 2006 by a fellow physician was unsealed after the government negotiated the settlement. Under the agreement, the whistle-blower, Lokesh Chandra, will receive 17.5 percent of any amounts collected from Sheth by the United States or Illinois.
Sheth had pleaded guilty to lying thousands of times to Medicare and other insurers to get millions of dollars he did not earn for patients he never treated.
Sheth, 50, of Burr Ridge, and whose office was in Flossmoor, was sentenced in August to five years and is to report to prison in October.
He also was ordered to pay around $13 million in restitution and agreed to forfeit property and funds totaling more than $11.3 million that the government seized from him.
