Former Daphne doctor gets four years for failure to pay restitution in health care fraud case

Published: Mar. 31, 2023 at 2:38 PM CDT

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - A federal judge on Friday sentenced a former Daphne doctor to four years for willfully failing to pay restitution from a previous health care fraud conviction.

Chief U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock handed down a two-year sentence to Rassan Tarabein for bank fraud, criminal default and making false statements to a probation officer, followed by two years for aggravated identity theft. He also ordered Tarabein to be supervised by the U.S. Probation Office for three years after his sentence.

Tarabein had been ordered to pay more than $15 million in restitution after he pleaded guilty in 2017 to running an insurance scam in which he induced patients to visit his pain clinic so he could bill health care benefit programs for unnecessary tests and procedures.

A jury in November found that Tarabein – while awaiting sentencing in that case – issued cashier’s checks in 2018 worth more than $100,000 to himself without the court’s approval. Prosecutors alleged that he falsely represented to his probation officer that the checks were for payment of bills. The identity theft charge related to allegations that the counterfeit check bore the name and signature of a representative of the business, which previously had lost tens of thousands of dollars from a successful deposit of a nearly identical fraudulent check months earlier.

A judge had sentenced Tarabein to five years in prison in the health care fraud case, but the Bureau of Prisons released him to house arrest in Fairhope during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tarabein re-issued the 2018 cashier’s check to himself during that time, according to prosecutors.

Tarabein made no payments toward his restitution obligation from 2020 to 2022. Instead, the evidence suggested that Tarabein had access to and spent large sums of money on himself.

The jury heard evidence that he fraudulently deposited money into his bank account in December 2021, using information from another account that he had agreed to forfeit and that had been closed years earlier as part of his 2017 conviction.

Prosecutors also presented evidence that Tarabein made false statements to his probation officer in early 2022 in his financial disclosures while continuing to conceal assets.

Prosecutors showed jurors evidence that the FBI obtained in April when they arrested Tarabein as he was about to board a flight in Pensacola bound for Syria. That included a $31,000 counterfeit check dated March 2022 from a business in Georgia made payable to Tarabein at his address in Fairhope.