Filed: Apr. 28, 2005
Latest Update: Feb. 21, 2020
Summary: United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit F I L E D IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS April 28, 2005 FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT Charles R. Fulbruge III Clerk No. 04-50791 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus ARTHUR NIAZ RANA, Defendant-Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas (USDC No. M-04-CR-003) _ Before REAVLEY, JONES, and GARZA, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM:* For the following reasons we uphold the conviction, and we vacate an
Summary: United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit F I L E D IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS April 28, 2005 FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT Charles R. Fulbruge III Clerk No. 04-50791 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus ARTHUR NIAZ RANA, Defendant-Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas (USDC No. M-04-CR-003) _ Before REAVLEY, JONES, and GARZA, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM:* For the following reasons we uphold the conviction, and we vacate and..
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United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
April 28, 2005
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
No. 04-50791
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
ARTHUR NIAZ RANA,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for
the Western District of Texas
(USDC No. M-04-CR-003)
_______________________________________________________
Before REAVLEY, JONES, and GARZA, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
For the following reasons we uphold the conviction, and we vacate and remand the
case for resentencing:
1. Rana’s various criminal acts were not improperly joined for trial, and the
*
Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the Court has determined that this opinion should not be
published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. R.
47.5.4.
district court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to sever the
allegations. See United States v. Hickman,
331 F.3d 439, 446-47 & nn. 7-
8 (5th Cir. 2003). Rana billed for services not performed and billed for
unnecessary services actually performed as part of his scheme to commit
health care fraud. Each false claim was an act in furtherance of that
scheme.
Id. at 446 & n.7. Likewise, Rana was not convicted on a less than
unanimous verdict, and the indictment was not duplicitous.
Id. at 443 and
446.
2. The government did not constructively amend the indictment by offering
evidence that Rana performed and billed for unnecessary medical
procedures in addition to offering evidence that Rana fraudulently billed for
procedures that were never actually performed. The indictment referred to
the elements of the charged offense generally and also mentioned specific
instances of charging the health care programs for allergy tests Rana never
performed. Rana claims that the government’s introduction of testimony
relating to other, medically unnecessary tests (in addition to evidence
relating to the allergy tests Rana never performed at all) constituted a
variance. However, the introduction of additional evidence referencing a
separate fraudulent act does not mean that Rana was tried for anything
beyond the specific charges presented in the indictment returned by the
grand jury, or that Rana lacked sufficient notice of the charges against him.
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Any error was harmless. See Stirone v. United States,
361 U.S. 212, 217-
18 (1960); United States v. Martino,
648 F.2d 367, 382 (5th Cir. 1981)
(rejecting defendant’s claim of variance where the government indicted on
only one count of conspiracy and presented evidence of multiple
conspiracies at trial).
3. The evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s guilty verdict. Rana
admitted that he billed for more allergy tests than he actually performed and
that he performed unnecessary medical procedures, and the government
provided evidence that the overbilling was not merely due to clerical or
computer errors. The government provided evidence that Rana was aware
that he routinely billed for 96 allergy tests, no matter how many tests were
actually performed. Because Rana targeted Medicaid, his scheme to
commit health care fraud affected interstate commerce. See
Hickman, 331
F.3d at 444.
4. The indictment did not include acts barred by the statute of limitations,
because Rana was engaged in a continuous scheme to commit health care
fraud.
Id. at 445-46.
5. Rana argues that the district court erred by allowing into evidence summary
charts without requiring the government to furnish the underlying data used
to create the charts; however, after looking at all of the evidence, the district
court found that the government had turned over all of the underlying data.
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Rana also argues that the summary charts were flawed or incomplete due to
(1) clerical errors in the summary charts, (2) patients’ information being
redacted, and (3) the fact that the charts could not prove that the services
billed for were not actually performed. The clerical errors in the charts may
have affected the weight of the evidence, but they did not render the
evidence inadmissible. Some of the patients’ information was redacted to
ensure the patients’ privacy when the evidence was presented to the jury,
but Rana had all of the redacted information. Finally, the summary charts
were not offered to prove that Rana failed to perform the services for which
he billed; they merely summarized Rana’s billing history. The government
offered sufficient evidence to prove that Rana had not performed the
services, including Rana’s own admissions. We hold that the district court
did not abuse its discretion by admitting the summary charts into evidence.
See United States v. Smyth,
556 F.2d 1179, 1184 (5th Cir. 1977).
6. It was also not an abuse of discretion for the government to exclude Rana’s
hearsay evidence in the form of a note allegedly written by a former
employee taking blame for billing errors that occurred at the clinic.
Id.
7. The government did not engage in misconduct by questioning the
authenticity of an obviously altered document offered into evidence by
Rana. The district court noted that the date on which the document was
purported to be created was three weeks after the date on which the
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document was offered into evidence, so there was some basis for the
government’s allegations.
8. Finally, in light of United States. v. Booker, __ U.S. __,
125 S. Ct. 738, 750
(2005), we vacate and remand the case for resentencing, because the district
court and not the jury determined the amount of restitution and loss, which
was then used to calculate Rana’s sentence.
The conviction is AFFIRMED; the sentence is VACATED and the case is
REMANDED.
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