State Attorney Dave Aronberg announced that Dr. Max Louis Citrin pled guilty today to 4 counts of False and Fraudulent Insurance Fraud (more than $100,000, 1st degree felony) for filing false claims with three insurance companies, totaling in excess of $17 million, from 2015 to 2018.

The conviction is the 75th for Palm Beach County’s Sober Homes Task Force, which has made 120 arrests since October 2016. Based on complaints that he was improperly prescribing controlled substances to residents of sober homes, the Task Force began an investigation in November 2017, including an undercover operation that exposed the fraud. Dr. Citrin was routinely billing insurance companies as much as $20,000 per patient for unnecessary allergy testing and treatment.

Most of the claim forms presented to insurance companies included progress notes and patient medical records that contained identical diagnoses and symptoms, patient background and even vital signs that appeared to be cut and pasted onto each record he submitted. There were 227 patients involved in the fraudulent treatment and billing scheme, many of whom never complained about, or suffered from, allergies of any kind.

Dr. Citrin was arrested on March 10, 2020, and re-arrested on February 25, 2021 for additional charges stemming from the ongoing investigation. Insurance companies paid Dr. Citrin in excess of $2.4 million for his claims.

The terms of the plea include the following:

30 months prison followed by 5 years of probation; relinquishment of medical licenses in Florida and California, $30,000 in investigative costs to the Department of Insurance Fraud and the SHTF, $2,459,289 restitution to Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Humana Insurance companies.

“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,” said State Attorney Aronberg. “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.”