The Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced that an Indian-origin doctor, named Dipak Desai, was sentenced to 71 months in a federal prison and was ordered to repay over $2.2 million for committing a health insurance fraud.

According to Daniel G Bogden the Nevada federal prosecutor, the Las Vegas doctor ran an endoscopy centre where he overcharged the US health insurance systems for senior citizens and for the poor besides private health insurers for anesthesia services. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy and health care fraud and was sentenced by federal Judge Larry R Hicks Desai.

"Dr Desai intentionally defrauded the federal health care system for his own personal enrichment," Bogden said. "We are hopeful this closes a long and sordid chapter of harm caused to the people and businesses of Nevada."

According to an FBI press release, Desai and Tonya Rushing, his endoscopy company's chief operating officer, "imposed intense pressure on the endoscopy center employees to schedule and treat as many patients as possible in a day, and instructed the nurse anesthetists to overstate in their records the amount of time they spent on the anesthesia procedures."

For her role in the scam, Rushing was earlier sentenced to a year in jail.

-Sumana