A legal ordeal for dozens of suburban women ended Monday, when their former doctor was sentenced to prison after admitting to health care fraud.
They were former patients of a suburban doctor who was sentenced for lying to health insurance companies and her patients, including telling them they needed aggressive cancer treatments when the woman did not have cancer.
Some women preferred to use only their first name.
“I am glad she is going to prison for what she did because she deserves to go to prison,” Angela told me.
“She has permanently altered people’s lives; it is something you cannot undo. “Ten years is such a short time,” Socorro Urbano stated.
OB-GYN Mona Ghosh was sentenced to ten years in prison and ordered to repay $1.5 million to various health insurance companies.
At the Dirksen Federal Building, Federal Judge Franklin Valderrama told Ghosh, “You irrevocably harmed women who trusted you. “You used your patients to fund your lavish lifestyle.”
Ghosh’s practice was in Hoffman Estates but closed after the FBI began investigating her billing.
At a hearing last month, some of her former patients read victim impact statements about unnecessary, invasive procedures that occasionally resulted in infertility.
“She took it away from everyone, not just me. Katie Hart said, “I was not done having kids, and she took it from me.”
“At least she will be imprisoned, while I will be free. She can no longer harm anyone, and the most important thing is to prevent any further harm to these women,” Christie said.
“Horrific, absolutely horrific,” attorney Adam Snyder remarked.
Snyder represents nearly 100 of Ghosh’s former patients and believes that many more were unaware of the deception. Snyder says that many of the patients were low-income women of color.
“She took women’s fertility so that they could trust health care. Snyder said, “She took the ability of women to have their own families.”
Ghosh is ordered to surrender her medical license and report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons in September. She made no comment as she left the courtroom.
Civil lawsuits are now being filed against Ghosh to seek restitution for her former patients.
