Ritesh Patel Agreed to Be Excluded for 10 Years for Making False Statements About His Educational Background to HHS and His Employer, a Federally-Qualified Health Center Receiving HHS Grants

On April 8, 2021, Ritesh Patel (Patel), St. Paul, Minnesota, entered into a settlement agreement with OIG in which he agreed to be excluded under 42 U.S.C. 1320a-7a and 42 U.S.C. 1320a-7(b)(7) for 10 years. OIG alleged that Patel knowingly presented or caused to be presented specified claims under an HHS grant that he knew or should have known were false or fraudulent and made or caused to be made false statements of material fact in documents that are required to be submitted in order to directly or indirectly receive funding provided by HHS. Specifically, OIG alleged that: (1) on or about September 2018, Patel misrepresented to a St. Paul, Minnesota federally-qualified health center (FQHC) that he had a Doctor of Medicine degree (M.D.) from the Saint James School of Medicine and a Doctor of Philosophy degree (Ph.D.) in Economics and a Master of Business Administration Degree (M.B.A.) from the University of Florida, causing the FQHC to submit a prior approval request that contained these same misrepresentations to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to obtain Patel’s approval as the FQHC’s Chief Executive Officer; and (2) on various occasions between on or about May 20, 2019, and on or about March 31, 2020, Patel mispresented to HRSA in funding applications that he had an M.D., Ph.D., and M.B.A. Senior Counsel Michael Torrisi, assisted by Chief Investigator Amber Mahmood, represented OIG.

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