A Potomac dentist who pleaded guilty in February to stealing $8.5 million from Medicaid and practicing without a license has been sentenced to an additional 18 months in jail for violating probation, Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown announced Friday.
Seyed Hamid Tofigh, 57, was convicted in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County in February and was originally sentenced to 78 days in jail and 18 months of home detention plus a restitution requirement of $8.5 million, the attorney general’s office said Friday in a press release.
Circuit Court Judge Carol Ann Coderre found Tofigh to have violated the terms of his probation and home detention, sending him to jail for 18 months, according to the release. Tofigh’s attorney could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.
Tofigh was prohibited from providing health care services under the terms of his probation, according to the release. While on home detention, he “almost immediately began to apply for dentistry positions at practices in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. using an altered dental license,” the release said. Tofigh also violated the terms of his probation regarding departures from his home.
“People who knowingly break the law … cannot avoid the consequences,” Brown said. “This former dentist had already put his young patients at risk and was trying to return to practicing dentistry again without a license, which would have put the public in danger. I’m glad the court acted because this behavior can’t be allowed. If you break the law, you will face the consequences every time.”
Tofigh became a licensed dentist in Maryland in 1994 and owned multiple dental practices with his two brothers, the Attorney General’s Office said. In 2015, all three brothers separated their ownership of the practices, and Tofigh retained ownership of Greenbelt Family Dentistry in Prince George’s County and Rockville Family Dentistry at 5806 Hubbard Drive, according to the attorney general’s office.
In 2014, the Maryland Board of Dental Examiners suspended Tofigh’s license to practice dentistry after receiving numerous complaints from his patients, the attorney general’s office said. The board found “there was substantial likelihood that he posed a risk of harm to public health, safety and welfare,” according to a consent order filed in 2015.
Then, in 2015, after conducting further investigation, the board revoked his license because 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,” according to the attorney general’s office.
From 2015 to January 2023, even though he no longer had a license, Tofigh continued to own his Greenbelt and Rockville practices and treat patients, specifically Maryland Medicaid recipients, the attorney general’s office said.
In order to file his treatments under Medicaid without a license, he “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,” according to the attorney general’s office.
From 2015 to 2022, Tofigh “submitted claims for payment to Maryland Medicaid using the name, Medicaid provider number, and credentials” of his two brothers, his nephew and a former colleague, who are all licensed dentists in the state, the attorney general’s office stated.
Additionally, he billed for services he did not provide, delivered “substandard” care, used equipment that was not sanitized, performed and billed for “unnecessary services,” including unnecessary root canals, fillings and tooth extractions, according to the attorney general’s office. He also “bullied and intimidated” any patients who questioned him and provided little to no documentation of the treatments he said he performed.
Courtney Cohn contributed reporting to this story.