Owner of D.C. dental clinic pleads guilty to health care fraud and agrees to forfeit $148,000

Washington, D.C. - Afsaneh Tehrani, the owner of a local dental clinic, has pled guilty and admitted to submitting false claims for payment to private insurance companies, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Joseph Persichini, Jr., Thomas Hampton, Commissioner of the District of Columbia Department of Insurance, Securities, and Banking, and Dr. Gregg Pane of the District of Columbia Department of Health, jointly announced today.

Ms. Tehrani, 47, of Old Dominion Drive, McLean, Virginia, pleaded guilty on November 14, 2006, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to the charge of health care fraud. In addition, she agreed to forfeit up to $148,000 seized at the time she was indicted which will be paid as restitution.

Ms. Tehrani will face up to ten years of incarceration when she is sentenced by the Honorable Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. on February

9, 2007.

According to the statement of the offense which Tehrani signed at the time of the plea, the defendant is the owner, President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer of DC Dentistry, Inc., a District of Columbia corporation that operates a dental clinic located at 1712 I Street, NW, Suite 910, Washington, D.C. DC Dentistry employs licensed dentists to perform dental procedures and to provide dental services to patients. The dentists provide a range of dental services, including cleaning teeth, inserting fillings, extracting teeth, and orthodontic procedures such as the fitting of braces.

Ms. Tehrani is not a dentist. She operates and manages the clinic, makes appointments, collects payments from patients, performs billing to private insurance companies for services, and pays the clinic's expenses, including the payroll. Ms. Tehrani also hires the dentists and pays them a fee for their services.

Between 2000 and 2004, Ms. Tehrani submitted or caused to be submitted false claims for payment to private insurance companies, including Aetna and Metlife, for dental work performed or allegedly performed by dentists of DC Dentistry on patients of DC Dentistry. Aetna and Metlife are health care benefit programs, in that they are private plans or contracts, affecting commerce, under which medical benefits or services are provided to individuals. These claims were false because they asserted that dental procedures had been performed on patients when, in fact, no such procedures were performed, or because they sought payment for the same procedures that already had been billed to and paid by another insurance company. Aetna and Metlife paid for false claims by mailing checks to the DC Dentistry office in Washington, D.C.

In announcing the guilty plea, U.S. Attorney Taylor, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Persichini, Commissioner Hamptom, and Dr. Pane praised the joint investigative efforts of the investigators, in particular, Special Agents Sherri Queener and Chadwick Elgersma and Financial Analyst Leslie Smith of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Senior Fraud Investigator Carl Ditchey of the Enforcement and Investigations Bureau of the D.C. Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking; and Investigators Greg Scurlock and Mark Donatelli of the District of Columbia Department of Health. They also commended Assistant U.S. Attorneys Judith A. Kidwell, William Cowden of the Asset Forfeiture Unit, and Thomas E. Zeno of the Fraud and Public Corruption Section.

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