The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts announced on February 13, 2026 that 45-year-old Timothy Doyle of Selden, New York was sentenced in federal court in Boston to 14 months in prison, to be followed by one year of supervised release, for conspiring to offer and pay kickbacks to doctors in exchange for ordering medically unnecessary brain scans. Doyle was also ordered to pay $27,225,434 in restitution and $1,102,725 in forfeiture. Doyle had pleaded guilty in January 2025 to one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-kickback statute.
The government had alleged that from at least June 2013 through at least September 2020, Doyle conspired with others, including two managers for a mobile medical diagnostics company that performed transcranial doppler (TCD) scans, to enter into kickback agreements with various doctors. TCD scans are brain scans that measure blood flow in parts of the brain. Doyle and his alleged co-conspirators agreed to offer and pay doctors kickbacks, some in cash and others by check, based on the number of TCD ultrasounds the doctors ordered. Doyle and his alleged co-conspirators created purported rental and administrative service agreements, which on paper made it appear as if doctors were compensated for the TCD company’s use of space and administrative resources of the ordering doctor’s practice based on fair market value and not based on the volume or value of referrals. The government alleged that these agreements were shams that hid the true nature of the arrangement of paying per test.
The scheme resulted in fraudulent bills of approximately $70.6 million to Medicare; Medicare paid approximately $27.2 million to the TCD company for the fraudulent claims.
Transcranial Doppler (TCD) Ultrasound
Transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound provides rapid, noninvasive, real-time measures of cerebrovascular function. TCD can be used to measure flow velocity in the basal arteries of the brain to assess relative changes in flow, diagnose focal vascular stenosis, or to detect embolic signals within these arteries. TCD can also be used to assess the physiologic health of a particular vascular territory by measuring blood flow responses to changes in blood pressure (cerebral autoregulation), changes in end-tidal CO2 (cerebral vasoreactivity), or cognitive and motor activation (neurovascular coupling or functional hyperemia). TCD has established utility in the clinical diagnosis of a number of cerebrovascular disorders such as acute ischemic stroke, vasospasm, subarachnoid hemorrhage, sickle cell disease, as well as other conditions such as brain death. Clinical indication and research applications for this mode of imaging continue to expand.
If you have information regarding false claims having been submitted to Medicare and the information is not publicly known and no actions have been taken by the government with regard to recovering the false claims, you should promptly consult with a False Claims Act attorney (also known as qui tam attorneys) in your U.S. state who may investigate the basis of your False Claims Act allegations and who may also assist you in bringing a qui tam lawsuit on behalf of the United States, if appropriate, for which you may be entitled to receive a portion of the recovery received by the U.S. government.
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