Practically 200 individuals have been charged in a sweeping nationwide crackdown on healthcare fraud schemes with false claims topping $2.7bn, america Division of Justice has stated.
Lawyer Normal Merrick Garland introduced on Thursday costs in opposition to medical doctors, nurse practitioners and others throughout the US accused of a wide range of scams, together with a $900m scheme in Arizona focusing on dying sufferers.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a trafficker in a drug cartel or a company govt or medical skilled employed by a healthcare firm. Should you revenue from the illegal distribution of managed substances, you may be held accountable,” Garland stated in an announcement.
Within the Arizona case, prosecutors have accused two house owners of wound care corporations of accepting greater than $330m in kickbacks as a part of a scheme to fraudulently invoice Medicare for amniotic wound grafts, that are dressings to assist heal wounds.
Nurse practitioners had been pressured to use the wound grafts to aged sufferers who didn’t want them, together with individuals in hospice care, the Justice Division stated. Some sufferers died the day they obtained the grafts or inside days, courtroom papers say.
In lower than two years, greater than $900m in bogus claims had been submitted to Medicare for grafts that had been used on fewer than 500 sufferers, prosecutors stated.
The house owners of the wound care corporations, Alexandra Gehrke and Jeffrey King, had been arrested this month on the Phoenix airport as they had been boarding a flight to London, based on courtroom papers urging a choose to maintain them behind bars whereas they await trial.
A lawyer for Gehrke declined to remark, and a lawyer for King didn’t instantly reply to an e-mail from The Related Press.
Authorities allege Gehrke and King, who obtained married this yr, knew costs had been coming and had been making ready to flee. At their residence, authorities discovered a e book titled, How To Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Go away False Trails, and Vanish With out a Hint, based on courtroom papers. In considered one of their luggage packed for his or her flight, there was a e book titled Prison Regulation Handbook: Know Your Rights, Survive The System, the papers say.
Gehrke and King lived lavishly off the scheme, prosecutors allege, citing in courtroom papers luxurious automobiles, an almost $6m residence and greater than $520,000 in gold bars, cash and jewelry. Officers seized greater than $52m from Gehrke’s private and enterprise financial institution accounts after her arrest, prosecutors say.
In complete, 193 individuals had been charged in a collection of separate instances introduced over about two weeks within the nationwide healthcare fraud sweep. Authorities seized greater than $230m in money, luxurious automobiles and different property. The Justice Division carries out these sweeping healthcare fraud efforts periodically with the objective of serving to to discourage different potential wrongdoers.
In one other Arizona case, one girl is accused of billing the state’s Medicaid company for substance abuse therapy providers that didn’t serve any actual function or had been by no means offered, prosecutors say.
One other case alleges a scheme in Florida to distribute misbranded HIV medicine. Prosecutors say medicine had been purchased on the black market and resold to unsuspecting pharmacies, which then offered the medicines to sufferers.
In some instances, sufferers got bottles that contained completely different medicine than the label confirmed. One affected person ended up unconscious for twenty-four hours after taking what he was led to imagine was his HIV remedy however was really an antipsychotic drug, prosecutors say.