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DrMona Gosh, sentenced to 10-years imprisonment for healthcare fraud
A legal ordeal for dozens of suburban women came to an end Monday, as 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, sometimes telling the patients they needed aggressive treatments for cancer, but the woman did not have cancer.
"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.
Federal Judge Franklin Valderrama at the Dirksen Federal Building told Ghosh, "You irrevocably harmed women who put their trust in you. You used your patients to bankroll your luxurious lifestyle."
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 women 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. (ABC7 Chicago, excluding headline)