Ex-OB-GYN from Hoffman Estates, Mona Ghosh, Sentenced to 10 Years for Health Care Fraud

CHICAGO (WLS) — The legal troubles for numerous suburban women concluded on Monday when their ex-physician received a prison sentence after confessing to committing health care fraud.

These women were previously treated by a suburban doctor who was penalized for deceiving health insurance companies and her patients, at times falsely informing them they required intense cancer treatments, despite them not having cancer.

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Some women preferred to only use a first name.

“I’m glad she’s going to prison for what she did because she deserves to go to prison,” Angela said.

“She has altered lives indefinitely; it’s something you can’t take back. Ten years is such a small time,” Socorro Urbano said.

OB-GYN Mona Ghosh was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and ordered to pay back $1.5 million to several health insurance companies.

At the Dirksen Federal Building, Federal Judge Franklin Valderrama stated to Ghosh, “You caused irreversible harm to the women who trusted you. You exploited your patients to fund your opulent way of living.”

Ghosh’s practice was in Hoffman Estates but closed after the FBI began looking into her billing.

At a hearing last month, some of her former patients read victim impact statements about having unnecessary, invasive procedures that sometimes led to infertility.

“Not just me, but everyone she took that right away from. I wasn’t done having kids, and she took it from me,” Katie Hart said.

“At least she will be in prison, and I will be living free. She can no longer harm anybody, and that the main thing to do no more harm to any more of these women,” Christie said.

“Horrific, absolutely horrific,” attorney Adam Snyder said.

Snyder represents nearly 100 of Ghosh’s former patients, and says there are likely more who may not have known about the deception. Snyder says many of the patients were lower-income women of color.

“She took the fertility of women, for them to trust health care. The ability of woman to develop families of their own, she took that,” Snyder said.

Ghosh is ordered to surrender her medical license, and reports to the Federal Bureau of Prisons in September. She did not comment leaving court.

Civil lawsuits are now being filed against Ghosh to get restitution to her former patients.