Former Fergus Falls doctor gets 15 years for abusing hockey players

A former Fergus Falls doctor once trusted around youth hockey was sentenced to 15 years in prison after admitting he sexually abused high school players he treated and traveled with. Zvi Levran’s case has exposed how medical authority and school sports gave him access to teenagers in Otter Tail County for years.

Judge Brady sentenced Levran, 69, in Otter Tail County on April 7 to 180 months on a third-degree criminal sexual conduct count and 10 years each on two fourth-degree counts, all to run concurrently. Levran pleaded guilty March 30 to three of six counts tied to conduct prosecutors said occurred between the winter of 2014 and the spring of 2016.

Local reporting says Levran practiced pediatric and family urology at Lake Region Healthcare from 2011 to 2018, giving him a position of trust in Fergus Falls while he worked with local athletes. Prosecutors said he used that role and his reputation with youth hockey to gain access to teenage boys and to hide sexual contact as medical treatment. The victims were high school-age hockey players at the time.

The Minnesota sentence will run concurrently with a prior 10- to 25-year prison term Levran received in Michigan on April 29, 2025. Oakland County prosecutors said that case involved 28 counts and that the majority of the guilty plea stemmed from incidents involving teen boys he met while providing medical assistance to youth hockey teams. Michigan officials also said the court imposed lifetime monitoring and lifetime sex-offender registration after hearing impact statements from three victims.

The case has reverberated beyond the courtroom because it reaches into two institutions families in Otter Tail County depend on most: health care and youth sports. It also raises hard questions for hockey programs, parents and medical providers about who is allowed close access to minors, how complaints are handled, and whether warning signs were missed while Levran operated in plain sight around Fergus Falls and nearby rinks.

With the Minnesota sentence now entered, Levran remains under the weight of both states’ cases and the long-term consequences that follow a sex-crime conviction. Minnesota public-safety guidance says predatory offenders who are classified at Level 3 trigger community notification when they leave prison, adding another layer of scrutiny to a case that has already broken trust in the communities it touched.