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A Palm Beach County doctor is heading to prison after filing over $17 million in false insurance claims, the Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office announced Monday.
Dr. Max Citrin, who runs a medical practice in Boca Raton, pled guilty to four counts of false and fraudulent insurance fraud after collecting over $2.4 million from Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna and Humana.
As part of the plea agreement, Citrin, 38, was sentenced to 30 months in prison and five years of probation. He will also be forced to give up his medical licenses in Florida and California and must pay over $2.4 million in restitution to the insurance companies.
Citrin, 38, was first arrested in March 2020 after an undercover operation found he was improperly prescribing controlled substances to sober home residents. The undercover operation, which began in 2017 and was run by Palm Beach County’s Sober Homes Task Force, discovered Citrin was regularly billing insurance companies as much as $20,000 for unnecessary treatment after copying and pasting false symptoms for patients.
After his arrest in 2020, Citrin was re-arrested on February 25, 2021 for additional charges from the ongoing investigation.
“Dr. Citrin made a mockery of his Hippocratic oath by cutting and pasting the same symptoms and vital signs for most of his patients so he could fraudulently bill insurers millions of dollars,” Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Aronberg said in a news release. “Our Sober Homes Task Force will continue to investigate, arrest and prosecute those, like Dr. Citrin, who exploit people in drug recovery and put profit over patient care.”
