A New York rehab owner spent four years slapping a doctor’s name on claims the doctor never authorized, never performed, and never even worked there to sign. The plans paid him about $12.4 million. When the physician finally confronted him, Nosson Sklar did not invent a paperwork story. He said the quiet part out loud. It was fraud. He did it “because of the money.”
On September 9, Southern District of New York prosecutors announced that Sklar, 56, also known as Nathan Sklar, had been sentenced to 38 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and forfeiture of $12,440,000. He also has to cover the doctor’s legal bills.
Townhall carried the case this week. The math is ugly even before you get to the sermon. More than $20 million in claims. Three health plans. One borrowed physician. A little more than three years in a cell.
For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
A Doctor Who Was Not There
Sklar owned and ran a company with physical rehabilitation clinics around New York City. From at least January 2020 through about July 2024, he submitted or caused others to submit claims listing a physician prosecutors call only Victim-1 as the rendering provider. That doctor did not treat those patients. He was not on staff during the scheme. He never gave Sklar permission to bill in his name.
That is not a coding error. That is identity theft dressed up as physical therapy. Insurers do not cut multimillion-dollar checks because a clinic feels busy. They pay because a licensed physician’s credentials sit on the claim. Steal the name, and the money follows.
In July 2024 the doctor called Sklar. Twice. Sklar confessed. Not in a courtroom. Not after a raid. On the phone, to the man whose name he had been selling.
“Today’s sentence reflects the seriousness of this crime and our Office’s commitment to safeguarding affordable health care from fraud for all New Yorkers,” said U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald. “Nosson Sklar spent years bilking health care benefit programs of millions of dollars and will now spend serious time in prison for his conduct.”
Serious time is a generous phrase for 38 months after $12.4 million landed. He pleaded guilty in December 2025 to one count of health care fraud, a charge that carries up to ten years. The judge gave him a little over three. New Yorkers who work an honest job and get a $400 surprise bill in the mail can do the division themselves.
This Is How Premiums Get Written
Politicians love to talk about greedy insurers and mean employers when family coverage jumps another thousand dollars. They talk less about the pipeline of ghost visits, borrowed NPIs, and rehab mills that treat the billing code as the product. Sklar’s case is one file in a fat drawer.
Earlier this year Team Rehab agreed to pay nearly $5 million after federal lawyers said the chain billed one-on-one therapy codes for group sessions. In Pennsylvania, two physical-therapy owners each drew six years for a conspiracy that billed more hours than the clinics were even open.
The pattern is the same. A facility. A credential. A claim. A check. Patients become inventory. Doctors become stationery. The rest of us pay the freight in premiums, deductibles, and the slow death of trust that anyone in a white coat is telling the truth about what happened in the room.
The FBI and HHS Office of Inspector General built the Sklar case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jorja N. Knauer and David A. Markewitz handled it out of the White Plains Division. They did their jobs. The question left on the table is whether 38 months teaches the next owner anything except to hire a better lawyer and keep the confession off the phone.
Theft Still Has a Name
Healthcare is a covenant before it is an industry. A hurting person walks in. A clinician is supposed to lay hands on the injury and tell the truth about the work. Sklar skipped the work and kept the invoice. He used another man’s license the way a counterfeiter uses another man’s plate. Then he explained himself with the oldest motive in the book.
Because of the money.
That is not a complex compliance failure. That is Exodus, chapter twenty, verse fifteen. Thou shalt not steal. The plans that paid the $12.4 million will chase the forfeiture. The doctor will try to scrape Sklar’s name off his record. Families who cannot afford a copay will keep wondering why a simple course of therapy costs a used car.
The answer, more often than the evening news wants to admit, is sitting in a federal courtroom in White Plains, shrugging that he did it for the cash.
