In 2002, a Pennsylvania mental health provider agreed to pay $7.8 million (6.3 million) to settle criminal charges of false and fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid insurance claims.

In 2000, Tennessee psychiatrist Jan A. Mayer was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $400,000 in restitution for his role in a scheme to submit false bills to several government and private insurance agencies, including bills for 24 hours of work during periods that he was vacationing in Puerto Rico.

In 2000, in Mainz, Germany, psychiatrist Otto Benkert was sentenced to 11 months in jail, suspended in lieu of probation, fined $176,171 and ordered to pay $704,683 in compensation for defrauding the university where he worked as the Chief of Psychiatry.

In 1997, a Brisbane, Australia psychiatrist, Mary Jane Ditton, was convicted of making false claims to Medicare, after systematically doubling the amount of time she spent in consultation with patients. She was ordered to repay nearly $35,000 and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail.

Between 1994 and 1998, scandal rocked Japan after the discovery that private psychiatric hospitals were forcibly incarcerating and illegally restraining patients, falsifying medical records, and inflating the numbers of doctors and nurses in the facilities to obtain more money from the government. Several psychiatrists were convicted of fraud and jailed.

Drug Fraud Drug abuse and drug fraud are common occurrences in the psychiatric system. According to one veteran California health care fraud investigator, and as seen in these following examples, one of the simplest ways to detect fraud is to look for excessive prescribing rates among psychiatrists.

In May 2004, New York psychiatrist David Roemer was sentenced after pleading guilty to a charge of felony conspiracy in a prescription drug scam that defrauded the government�s insurance scheme and flooded the streets with millions of dollars in highly addictive narcotics and other drugs, including the tranquilizer Xanax. Roemer worked with four accomplices who recruited Medicaid insurance recipients from the streets and drug treatment centers. On the ride to Roemer�s office, the recruits were given money and told what drugs to ask for. Roemer then �sold� them the
prescriptions, which they then took to pharmacies and filled using their Medicaid benefits. The pills were handed over to the recruiters who sold them on the black market. Roemer was sentenced to 10 1/2 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $340,000 in restitution to the Medicaid program.

�There are few things more pathetic than a crooked doctor, particularly one who uses his office like a drug dealership,� New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco said during a press conference announcing the conviction and sentencing of psychiatrist Priyakant S. Doshi. In 1996, Doshi was sentenced up to 7 1/2 years in jail for indiscriminately dispensing drugs, �with no intent to determine if his patients really needed them.�

When Texas psychiatrist Frank Dunn was convicted in October 1992 for illegally distributing prescription drugs, Assistant District Attorney Susan Patterson told the court, �He is a drug dealer of the highest caliber � the pinnacle of the pyramid.� Drug abusers knew Dunn as �Dr. Feel Good.� He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and fined $10,000.

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