FORMER LICENSED DENTIST SENTENCED
TO JAIL FOR STEALING

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. announced today that Azad Ally, DDS, formerly a dentist licensed in Maryland and Medicaid provider of dental services in the Silver Spring area, was sentenced to six months in jail for his role in stealing from the Medicaid program. Baltimore City Circuit Court judge Wanda Keyes Heard also ordered Ally to pay $9,000 in restitution, which was part of a total of $300,000 due from Ally and his co-conspirator spouse, Nelinee Deonarine.

From August 1997 through May 1999, Ally, 45, (who now lives in Palm Bay, Florida) submitted nearly 1,500 false claims to a Medicaid health maintenance organization. He and his wife knowingly defrauded the HMO of approximately $282,000.00 by billing for dental services that were never performed. The scheme included billing falsely for putting stainless steel crowns on babies, performing services on teeth that had fallen out and hundreds of procedures on patients whom he in fact did not treat. His dental practice could not produce a single dental record to substantiate the $300,000 for which they billed.

Deonarine was convicted of conspiracy to commit Medicaid fraud and was sentenced in August 2006.

The case was prosecuted by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office in conjunction with the United States Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General.