Rye eye surgeon Ameet Goyal was a “broken and humbled” man before he was sentenced to prison last year for health care fraud, his attorneys told a federal judge, but he was prepared to endure “only because he is supported by loving family and friends.”
Now his wife is backing him again by agreeing to pay $700,000 to the government to settle a forfeiture judgment.
Goyal overbilled Medicare and private insurance plans by $3.6 million from 2010 to 2017, according to court records, at his ophthalmology practices in Rye, Mount Kisco, Wappingers Falls and Greenwich, Connecticut.
Essentially, he submitted insurance claims for lucrative, complex surgeries when simpler operations or no surgeries had been performed.
Goyal boasted to one of his colleagues that insurance companies were too stupid to catch him, according to the prosecutors”™ sentencing memorandum.
But he got noticed, for instance, for submitting seven times more claims for a grafting procedure than all doctors in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
He was accused of health care fraud and other charges in 2019 and pleaded guilty in 2021. U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel ordered him to forfeit $3.6 million and last March sentenced him to 8 years in prison.
He has paid nearly $1.8 million, according to a stipulation agreement approved by Judge Seibel on Jan. 19, leaving a balance of $1,809,146.
But he still owned a house on Holly Drive in Rye with his wife, Alka Goyal.
The 5 bedroom, 6.5 bath, 9,200-square-foot house is worth $1.6 million to nearly $2 million, according to estimates by the Zillow and Redfin online real estate marketplaces.
The government agreed to accept $700,00 from Alka Goyal as representing the value of her husband”™s interest in the property, according to the stipulation agreement.
The government also agreed to no longer seek forfeiture of the house, allow his interest to be transferred to his wife, and to treat the $700,000 payment as full satisfaction of all government claims against the property.
The payment will bring the total of forfeited assets to $2,490,854, or 69% of the $3.6 million forfeiture order.
Goyal, 59, is currently imprisoned at the U.S. Penitentiary at Canaan in northeast Pennsylvania. He is scheduled for release in February 2029.
