CHICAGO (WLS) — Dozens of suburban women saw closure to a legal battle as their former doctor was given a prison sentence for confessing to health care fraud.
The women had been patients of a suburban physician who was convicted of deceiving health insurance companies and patients by falsely claiming they required aggressive cancer treatments, even when they did not have cancer.
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Some women preferred to only use a first name.
“I’m glad she’s going to prison for what she did because she deserves to go to prison,” Angela said.
“She has altered lives indefinitely; it’s something you can’t take back. Ten years is such a small time,” Socorro Urbano said.
OB-GYN Mona Ghosh was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and ordered to pay back $1.5 million to several health insurance companies.
During the sentencing at the Dirksen Federal Building, Federal Judge Franklin Valderrama addressed Ghosh directly, accusing her of causing irreparable harm to the women who had trusted her, using her patients’ resources to finance her lavish lifestyle.
Ghosh’s practice was in Hoffman Estates but closed after the FBI began looking into her billing.
At a hearing last month, some of her former patients read victim impact statements about having unnecessary, invasive procedures that sometimes led to infertility.
“Not just me, but everyone she took that right away from. I wasn’t done having kids, and she took it from me,” Katie Hart said.
“At least she will be in prison, and I will be living free. She can no longer harm anybody, and that the main thing to do no more harm to any more of these women,” Christie said.
“Horrific, absolutely horrific,” attorney Adam Snyder said.
Snyder represents nearly 100 of Ghosh’s former patients, and says there are likely more who may not have known about the deception. Snyder says many of the patients were lower-income women of color.
“She took the fertility of women, for them to trust health care. The ability of woman to develop families of their own, she took that,” Snyder said.
Ghosh is ordered to surrender her medical license, and reports to the Federal Bureau of Prisons in September. She did not comment leaving court.
Civil lawsuits are now being filed against Ghosh to get restitution to her former patients.
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