Dentist Sentenced After Pleading Guilty To $8.5M Theft From Medicaid

ROCKVILLE, MD — A former dentist from Potomac was sentenced to five years in jail, with all but 78 days suspended, related to the theft of $8.5 million from Medicaid, the Maryland attorney general’s office said Friday.

In Prince George's County Circuit Court, Seyed Hamid Tofigh, 57, on Tuesday pleaded guilty to one count of defrauding the Medicaid program and one count of practicing dentistry without a license.

Tofigh practiced dentistry without a license on Maryland Medicaid recipients, almost exclusively children, and used the names, provider numbers, and professional credentials of licensed dentists to submit claims, according to the attorney general’s office.

The Maryland Medicaid program is a joint federal-state program that provides healthcare benefits to low-income individuals.

“This case revealed a complex healthcare fraud scheme that not only drained taxpayer dollars away from our state’s Medicaid program, but also placed Dr. Tofigh’s young patients in real danger,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a statement.

Along with the jail sentence, the circuit court judge placed Tofigh on 18 months’ home detention, with a five-year term of probation for the Medicaid fraud count, followed by a five-year term of probation for practicing dentistry without a license. Both sentences are to run consecutively, according to the court.

Tofigh also was ordered to pay $8.5 million in restitution within one year. At the time of sentencing, Tofigh had made one $4.5 million payment toward restitution.

Tofigh also is prohibited from providing healthcare services that are either partially or wholly funded by state or federal governments and must permanently surrender his Maryland dental license, according to the attorney general’s office.

Tofigh had been a licensed dentist in Maryland since September 1994 and owned several dental practices with two of his brothers. By 2015, all three brothers separated their ownership of the different dental practices, while Tofigh retained ownership of Greenbelt Family Dentistry, located at 7500 Hanover Parkway in Greenbelt, and Rockville Family Dentistry, at 5806 Hubard Drive in Rockville.

In March 2014, following several complaints from Tofigh’s patients, the Maryland Board of Dental Examiners suspended Tofigh’s license to practice dentistry, finding that there was a substantial likelihood that he posed a risk of harm to public health, safety, and welfare.

The board conducted further investigation and in February 2015 revoked Tofigh’s license to practice dentistry, finding that he kept “consistently incompetent and egregiously deficient” dental records, provided incompetent and substandard treatment to patients, fraudulently billed for services never provided, and engaged in unprofessional and dishonorable conduct.

From 2015 through January 2023, Tofigh continued to own the Greenbelt and Rockville practices and continued to practice dentistry on Maryland Medicaid recipients, according to the attorney general’s office.

Tofigh stole the identities of others, forged signatures on Medicaid applications, used aliases to avoid detection, directed his employees to use aliases to avoid accountability, and failed to cooperate with insurance audits, prosecutors said.

From 2015 through 2022, Tofigh submitted claims for payment to Maryland Medicaid using the name, Medicaid provider number, and credentials of his twin brother, his younger brother, and his nephew, all of whom are licensed dentists.

Tofigh also used the credentials and Medicaid provider number of a former colleague to submit fraudulent claims to the Medicaid program, the attorney general’s office said.