Feds arrest 38 in Medicare fraud crackdown

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Thu, May. 10, 2007
Feds arrest 38 in Medicare fraud crackdown
Home to ''prevalent'' Medicare fraud, South Florida is now also home to a federal-state strike force looking to root out medical schemes.
BY LESLEY CLARK
[e-mail]

WASHINGTON -- Calling South Florida a particularly ripe area for Medicare fraud, federal prosecutors Wednesday announced a crackdown on sham medical care companies, including the arrest of 38 people prosecutors say fraudulently billed the government for more than $142 million.
(snip)

''This kind of blatant fraud simply is intolerable.'' The companies purport to provide medical equipment, including wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs, but Leavitt said, most of the offices were empty, with only a name, phone number and alleged business hours posted on the door.

`DOOR AFTER DOOR'

''Door after door after door,'' Leavitt said. ``It was a shocking level of fraud to me.''

The arrests included a sweep Tuesday that netted 24 people suspected of operating such phony medical equipment supply companies.

In one example, two companies owned by Miami-Dade resident Eduardo Moreno allegedly billed Medicare for more than $1.9 million worth of services that were not medically necessary. The FBI has seized some of Moreno's assets, officials said, providing reporters with a photograph of what they said was Moreno's 2004 Rolls Royce Phantom -- worth about $200,000.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/884/story/101798.html

[MADem]

1. Who wants to place book on the POLITICAL affiliation of these thieves?

My money's on GOP, all the way.....

[Judi Lynn]

2. I have no doubt that you're right. Jeb Bush's "exile" friend pulled off the largest Medicare theft

on record at the time of his megacrime.

You can find many references to it, this is the first one I saw:

Jeb and Miguel Recarey

~snip~
IMC was run by Cuban-American Miguel Recarey, a character with a host of idiosyncrasies. He carried a 9-mm Heckler & Koch semiautomatic pistol under his suit coat and kept a small arsenal of AR-15 and Uzi assault rifles at his Miami estate, where his bedroom was protected by bullet-proof windows and a steel door. It apparently wasn't his enemies Recarey feared so much as his friends. He had a long-standing relationship with Miami Mafia godfather Santo Trafficante, Jr., and had participated in the illfated, CIA-inspired mob assassination plot against Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. (Associates of Recarey add that Trafficante was the money behind Recarey's business ventures.)

Recarey's brother, Jorge, also had ties to the CIA. So it was no surprise that IMC crawled withformer spooks. Employee résumés were studded with references to the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Cuban Intelligence agency; there was even a fellow who claimed to have been a KGB agent, An agent with the U.S. Office of Labor Racketeering in Miami would later describe IMC as a company in which "a criminal enterprise interfaced with intelligence operations."

Recarey also surrounded himself with those who could influence the political system. He hired Jeb Bush as IMC's "real-estate consultant." Though Jeb would never close a single real-estate deal, his contract called for him to earn up to $250,000 (he actually received $75,000). Jeb's real value to Recarey was not in real estate but in his help in facilitating the largest HMO Medicare fraud in U.S. history.

Jeb phoned top Health and Human Services officials in Washington in 1985 to lobby for a special exemption from HHS rules for IMC. This highly unusual waiver was critical to Recarey's scam. Without it, the company would have been limited to a Medicare patient load of 50 percent. The balance of IMC's patients would have had to be private -- that is, paying -- customers. Recarey preferred the steady flow of federal Medicare money to the thought of actually running a real HMO. Former HHS chief of staff McClain Haddow (who later became a paid consultant to IMC) testified in 1987 Jeb that directly phoned then-HHS secretary Margaret Heckler and that it was that call that swung the decision to approve IMCs waiver.
(snip)

Despite Jeb's involvement, trouble began brewing for IMC when a low-level HHS special agent in Miami, Leon Weinstein, discovered that Recarey was defrauding Medicare through overcharges, false invoicing, and outright embezzlement. Weinstein had been following Recarey's activities since 1977, and as early as 1983 he believed he had enough information to put together a case. However, he found his HHS superiors less than receptive; they took no action on Weinstein's information.

But Weinstein kept digging and in 1986 renewed his investigation of Recarey and IMC -- and again his HHS superiors blocked the probe. "Washington just refused to pursue my evidence," Weinstein, now retired, told Mother Jones last spring. "And they made it perfectly clear that I was not to pursue IMC. When I did, they threatened me and threatened my job."
(snip/...)

From:
Bush Family Value$
News: The Bush clan's family business
By Stephen Pizzo
September 1, 1992

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1992/09/bushboys.html

[seafan]

4. Thanks for this, Judi Lynn. Here's the rest of this story.

Jeb either:

1. has very poor business sense
2. is repeatedly very unlucky in choosing business partners (as far as avoiding prosecution along with them, Jeb's actually had perfect luck)
3. is a criminal
4. all of the above

.....

Weinstein dug in his heels. "I had them this time. I told my superiors I would fight this time because I had nothing to fear. I had just reached retirement age. They immediately backtracked," he says. Weinstein was allowed to continue his investigation -- though HHS still took no formal action against Recarey. Eventually Weinstein turned to Congressmen Barney Frank (D-NY) and Pete Stark (D-CA) with his information, sparking congressional hearings into the scandal.

Had it been up to HHS, Recarey would still be running his Medicare racket. But by chance, the now-disbanded U.S. Miami Organized Crime Strike Force was also investigating Recarey. (Recarey was bribing union officials in order to get them to sign workers up as patients at IMC, apparently so that IMC could meet its reduced non-Medicare patient requirements of 20 percent.) "We didn't know anything about the HHS investigation," former Organized Crime Strike Force special attorney Joe DeMaria says. "Recarey was bribing union officials.... But HHS never contacted us or told us anything."

Before Recarey's trial on bribery charges began, DeMaria's investigators also caught Recarey using his former spooks to wiretap IMC employees in an effort to discover who was talking to federal agents. DeMaria had Recarey indicted a second time, for the illegal listening devices. During Recarey's trial on the bribery charge, a lawyer who handled the bribe money testified that the money IMC gave him was not bribe money but "commissions" he had earned while doing work for the company. "See, that commission thing was Recarey's MO. They didn't call them bribes, they called them commissions," DeMaria explains.

After he was convicted, Recarey resigned from IMC and was immediately replaced by John Ward. (Ward had been law partner to Reagan-Bush campaign manager John Sears. And Sears had also been a lobbyist for IMC.) But Recarey's Medicare scam would never get to a public courtroom airing. Before his trial on the wiretap charge, Recarey skipped the country. His getaway was remarkable: just in time for his flight, the normally tight-fisted IRS expedited a $2.2 million income-tax refund, which Recarey claimed he had coming.

The tax refund was a windfall for Recarey. "Yeah, that was his getaway money," says a former IRS investigator who worked in the Miami office at the time but asked not to be named. "Though there is a special IRS procedure to expedite tax refunds for companies in financial distress, I don't think you can overlook the possibility that there was influence from the administration."

Recarey's last act before becoming a fugitive was an attempt to wire $30,000 into the bank account of Washington consultant and lobbyist Nick Panuzio -- whose partner was then managing George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign. (The wire transfer failed only because, in his haste, Recarey had gotten Panuzio's account number wrong.) It was only after Recarey was safely out of the country that the U.S. attorney in Miami -- a political appointee -- filed formal charges of Medicare fraud against him.

Whistle-blower Leon Weinstein retired in disgust from HHS and tried to get the IMC case before a judge by filing a Qui Tam suit. Such suits allow a private citizen to sue to recover money for the government in return for a share of any settlement. In his case, Weinstein named IMC and Recarey as defendants. But HHS continued to fight Weinstein, first challenging his right to bring such a suit and later accusing him of stealing HHS documents before leaving his job. When the courts supported Weinstein, HHS then stepped in, took over his lawsuit, and shouldered him out. The case remains in the courts and is still unresolved.

HHS officials now pursuing the litigation claim that Recarey defrauded the Medicare system of at least $12 million. Leon Weinstein says the government is lowballing the loss and that Recarey's take from his IMC scam could easily be many times that figure.

Since skipping Miami in 1987, Recarey has been living comfortably in Caracas, Venezuela. Thomas Holladay, the consul general of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, told Mother Jones that officials there were aware of Recarey's presence and had formally requested his extradition. "We made a formal request for his extradition," Consul General Holladay says. "But we can't do anything until the Venezuelans turn him over to us, and they have not done that." The conversation then ended abruptly. "You know, I'm really not supposed to be talking to you about this," Holladay says.

In May, following inquiries from Mother Jones, Congressman Pete Stark, who sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, wrote to both the Department of Justice and the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, demanding an explanation for six years of inaction on the Recarey case.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1992/09/bushboys.html

I posted this yesterday-----> Jeb's going to sit on the board of Tenet, which has been in big trouble over Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Interesting, no?

Jeb Bush Joins the Tenet Gravy Train (To be paid ~ $37,000 a day)

[MADem]

10. It's in their DNA, that sleazy business practices tendency! NT

[Judi Lynn]

15. No doubt that answer has to be "all of the above." It's so hard to believe his family

has so much power, such strong allies, that a man can live like this, have his friends like this monster helping himself to the U.S. taxpayers' money, and protect them all from any chance of justice, while, at the same time yammering constantly about their superior right-wing lock on "patriotism." Yeah, you bet!



TRUST OR HUSTLE: The Bush Record

David E. Scheim

~snip~
In 1987, Miguel Recarey, a longstanding business associate of Tampa Mafia boss Santos Trafficante, fled the U.S. under three indictments for labor racketeering, illegal wiretapping, and Medicare fraud.1 His firm, International Medical Centers (IMC), which was America’s largest health maintenance organization for the elderly and which had received $1 billion in Medicare funds, collapsed.2 Recarey’s HMO left $222 million in unpaid bills,3 and was suspected of up to $100 million in Medicare fraud.4 “IMC is the classic case of embezzlement of government funds,” said William Teich, who headed the U.S. Office of Labor Racketeering in Miami. Teich called it a “bust-out operation” where money was “drained out the back door” and disappeared down “a black hole.”5

But in 1985, Recarey had faced a major obstacle to building his Medicare empire: a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation that restricted an HMO to drawing no more than 50% of its revenue from Medicare.6 Jeb Bush came to the rescue: he called both HHS Secretary Margaret Heckler and a top aide, C. McLain Haddow and successfully convinced them to waive the regulation for Recarey, Haddow testified to Congress.7 Bush’s lobbying of HHS took place during the same period that top-level Republican lobbyists whom Recarey had hired for $1 million were also courting HHS for the waiver.8 Bush said that said he did not recall making any calls to Heckler or Haddow, but confirmed that he made one call on Recarey’s behalf to Haddow’s assistant, to secure Recarey a “fair hearing” within HHS.9

Haddow added in a news interview that in November 1984, Jeb had also called Heckler and Haddow for Recarey about another problem - complaints to HHS from doctors and patients about IMC’s medical care and allegations that Recarey had embezzled funds a few years earlier from another hospital.10 Bush had told Haddow that “contrary to any rumors that were floating around concerning Mr. Recarey, that he was a solid citizen from Mr. Bush’s perspective down there , that he was a good community citizen and a good supporter of the Republican Party.”11
(snip/...)

http://www.campaignwatch.org/more1.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wanted to mention something I'm certain you know, but maybe not everyone else: Jeb Bush worked as right-wing Cuban "exile" Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's campaign manager, when she ran on a promise she would get a pardon for airliner bomber/mass murderer/lifelong terrorist Orlando Bosch.

Jeb and Ileana begged his father, who was the President at the time, to pardon him, even though the U.S. Assistant Attorney General Joe D. Whitley had refused him entry into this country, after over 30 other countries had ALSO refused to admit him. _{George H. W. Bush} simply slipped in an administrative pardon, overturned the former decision, and now the monster lives as a free man in Miami, just the place we can also find his partner in mass murder, Luis Posada Carriles.

Orlando Bosch's lawyer during the proceedings was Raul Cantero, the Spanish raised grandson of bloody monster, death squad loving, filthy dictator Fulgencio Batista who tortured and bombed his own people.
Jeb made that man, who had NO previous experience as a judge, one of his Florida Supreme Court Justices.

They have taken our government hostage. Will we ever get it back?

[bobthedrummer]

27. Come what may, never give up-we will have to void just about everything this illegal

criminal gang has "passed" from the PATRIOT ACT to all the EO's and recess appointed cronies, etc.

No pardons for any of them-and their loot (which is ours) will be redistributed.

Nationalization of some functions may be required to take down these criminals.

[Judi Lynn]

25. Just found a reference to the fact you posted.....

Home > Q: The Florida Politics Blog > Archives > 2007 > May > 09

Jeb Blasted On The Street
By Brian E. Crowley | Wednesday, May 9, 2007, 12:07 PM

Brett Arends, a columnist for TheStreet.com has some harsh things to say about former Gov. Jeb Bush’s new job. Here’s some excerpts. For the full column, and it’s a doozy, go to TheStreet.com

Jeb Bush, the president’s brother and former governor of Florida, is up for election Thursday as a director of troubled hospital chain Tenet Healthcare (THC:NYSE). Assuming he’s waved through, his pay in his first year would come to nearly $37,000 a day.

This is the same Tenet that had to pay $900 million to Uncle Sam last summer to settle charges that it had overbilled Medicare and Medicaid over many years.

The U.S. attorneys announcing the settlement accused the company of “fraud” and trying to “manipulate and cheat the system.”

Anyone reading the public filings would have discovered that in your first year, you’ll earn $474,500 — for 13 days’ work

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/palmbeach/floridapolitics/entries/2007/05/09/jeb_blasted_on_the_street.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Simply unbelievable, isn't it? I'm sure he's not worth any part of it, also. So sick of these guys. They've got the country in their jaws and won't let go.

[bobthedrummer]

26. Kick.

[UNCLE_Rico]

14. WOW. If Waxman is as sharp as I think he is...

I can't believe how badly that whole situation stunk to high heaven?!?

Does anybody here actually believe that Jeb wouldn't just go right back to his same criminal racket (with Poppy's CIA buddies providing the cover) once he got out of 'public service', given that he probably made huge bucks doing it and is politically 'untouchable' now that he's out of office?

I'll tell ya, I HOPE like HELL Henry starts really diggin' into those attorney deaths and the novartis/tenet/jeb aspect to it. If it turns out the CIA is raiding THE PEOPLE'S Medicare stash (something they all SEE being taken DIRECTLY, as a line-item on their pay-stubs, week in and week out), THAT is something that people can understand in a 5 second sound-byte, and it will get the American People REALLY REALLY pissed off. And if it turns out they're actually killing people, federal attorneys no less, to keep this pipeline of cash going? And if it turns out that Jebbie is heading up such an organization, The Pretzeldick's BROTHER?

Oh, MY, GOD. We might actually get to see at least one Bush crime family member being hauled off in cuffs and taken to federal prison, right on our very own tee-vees, people. And if that goes down, impeachment is going to have to be put back on the table, because of the WH's obstructionism over this investigation, if for no other 'tangible' reason.

HEY, let a man have his little fantasy, okay?!?

[underpants]

3. HCA (the Frist family) gets caught regularly

of course nothing happens to them.

[donkeyotay]

5. Hmm. Phony medical equipment supply companies

And the stories on the Group Purchasing Organizations that are bilking hospitals out of an estimated $5-6 Billion. I wonder if there's a connection...besides the GOP.

[UNCLE_Rico]

13. Like I posted in that other thread regarding the mysterious attorney deaths a few days back...

Novartis to me sounds like a CIA Front Organization. I had NO idea at that time they're owned by Tenet, and that JEB works for Tenet according to this thread?

NOW ... THAT little tib-bit of knowledge ... well, just lemme say, it REALLY does nothing to disabuse me of my suspicions!

Hey, they gotta raise their Black-Ops Money somehow, right?

I'm not saying that the USA deaths/Novartis topic/situation is in any way related to this, but ... my, my ... the common threads and coincidences are, shall we say ... piling up?

How much y'all wanna bet we never hear a word about ANY of this in the mainstream media (again)? There'll be no trials of these individual perpetrators - or if their are charges, there'll be shady plea-bargains and wrist-slappings handed around like candy. Either that, or all the perps will all somehow just miraculously I mean mysteriously manage to vanish into this air...

Curiouser and Curiouser, I must say...

[donkeyotay]

17. Welcome to one of the places where we run ceaselessly after the crime spree

Watching in dismay as it becomes more obvious that all branches of government are broken. I saw a snippet of a doc on the mob recently, and they were talking about how the structure of organized crime was now unknown...well, I think we've found it again. Organized crime has gone legit. Welcome. Good luck to us, and a small item, if I've got it straight - it's Novation, not Novartis. It's hard to keep up.


:hi:

[bobthedrummer]

18. Here's a post from a parent thread that began by researching the involvement

of International American Products, Inc./IAP in the Walter Reed outpatient "scandal".

The post is about the history of black budgets and asset networks-which is what got installed in the stolen election of 2000, the shadow government.

The example below that "coincidently" follows that pattern is Hawk Associates, Inc. an "investment relations" firm. Btw, the Tenet Healthcare asset is Novation, and Jeb was made a Director at Tenet.

"Post 101: Historically the dark side of investment relations includes black budget relationships" posted 3-13-07
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x360539#402023

[L. Coyote]

6. X-Posts: Did Sampson's May 11 e-mail refer to May 8 notification to TENET Healthcare?

Did Sampson's May 11 e-mail refer to May 8 notification to TENET Healthcare?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x862846

US Attorney Firing: Voter Fraud, Medicare Fraud, WHICH IS IT ???
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=853813&mesg_id=862205

Tenet was facing, on May 10, a (quoting Kyle Sampson's May 11 e-mail) "real problem we have right now with Carol Lam"

"Despite the disclosure that the jurors were never close to a unanimous decision, it is still unclear whether the government will attempt a third trial against Tenet. According to U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, the government will report to the court as to whether there will be a third trial, which announcement is expected on May 22, 2006......"


May 10, 2006 - HHS Seeks to Knock Out San Diego Hospital = Alvarado's $95.8 million in revenue in first nine months of 2005

"The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking the ultimate punishment against a San Diego hospital by seeking to bar it from participating in federal healthcare programs, most importantly Medicare and Medicaid...."

[bobthedrummer]

7. Jeb recently became a Director at Tenet Healthcare, Tenet owns Novation LLC

and all these tangled webs sure seem interconnected to others-including the DoJ implosion

"A DU collaborative investigation: Thelma Colbert, Shannon Ross and other deaths at DoJ"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x847120

[seafan]

8. Jeb Bush's Medicaid *pilot program* push in Broward and Duval now under scrutiny.

Jeb pushed his Medicaid privatization scheme last year like there was no tomorrow. And just *WHO* are these "Choice Counselors"?


There is imho, something very big going to come out of this, as it ties Jeb into Medicaid/Medicare/Tenet/DOJ


From May 8, 2007

Report questions Broward Medicaid program

An independent research group reports finding ''many warning signs'' from patients and doctors in a Medicaid reform program going on in Broward and Duval counties that is being watched carefully by experts nationwide.
''Medicaid reform appears to be reducing the number of physicians participating in the Medicaid program, and those who remain appear to be seeing fewer patients,'' said the report from Georgetown University researchers released on Tuesday.

The Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees the Medicaid reform pilot, issued a statement in response: ``As with all studies based on focus groups and surveys, the information is a snapshot of a specific audience at a specific time. We do not agree with all the findings and have asked the university for their data so we can better understand their analysis and conclusions.''

The reforms, initiated by the administration of Gov. Jeb Bush, are an attempt to let private insurers compete to provide services for the poor patients who make up Medicaid, by offering a wide variety of choices.

The Bush goal was to provide better care at lower prices. ''Choice counselors'' were hired to help Medicaid recipients understand the many alternatives.

.....

''Fewer than half of focus group participants said they had spoken with Choice Counselors,'' the Georgetown researchers wrote. Moreover, the report continued, ``A number of beneficiaries who had spoken to Choice Counselors voiced frustration with not getting the information they most needed to make an informed choice -- most notably information on which plans covered their drugs and included their doctors.''

.....

'About half of doctors surveyed <51 percent> report that it is now harder for them to provide medically necessary services to children because of restrictions and requirements of the pilot programs,'' the report said.

.....

[bobthedrummer]

19. "very big" is modest, seafan-the BFEE seeks "full spectrum dominance"

I'm heartened to see that the truth is continuing to come out about these nefarious political criminal networks that have corrupted everything for their own extreme agenda of privatizing the world.

[anotherdrew]

9. it is unacceptable that Medicare administration has let it get this bad.

why don't they have people that go around and check on these companies? It seems to me having a simple system of verification is fundamental to setting up such a program. The fact that we don't have it just points to ongoing maladministration.

[Traveling_Home]

11. Please....

I well know how bad our medicaid and medicare and partD are but please be careful screwing around with these programs THAT MY LIFE DEPENDS ON!

Thank you

[anotherdrew]

12. oh I know how important it is

one of my many hats at work involves dealing with Medicare billing software. We bill for, among other things, clotting factor for hemo patients, which is one of the most expensive set of drugs they pay for, and patient care is always the primary concern, in a way the ONLY concern. But it really wouldn't be asking too much for medicare to send someone by every couple years to check that we are actually dispensing product to real clients, etc. That's all it would take to end these kind of fraudsters, that are, _right now_, screwing around with the programs. It's been a problem for decades, and jack all is really done about it, until they finally put a task force together, in one small part of the country.

[Traveling_Home]

23. And I used to run

Home Health Agencies back in the days of the UB-82.

Please everybody - most disabled people I know want and need to be at the heart of these discsuuions. I would ask you to quit lobbying for this ot that program and insteadf lobby for a mandate that those of us most effective get the say so. Be our supporters - not surrogates for our mommy and daddy that think they know best

[lonestarnot]

16. Bastards!

[Judi Lynn]

20. Posted independently today: Tenet hands Jeb Bush a big windfall

Posted on Fri, May. 11, 2007
Tenet hands Jeb Bush a big windfall

Jeb Bush will get over $450,000 in the next year from Tenet for being a board member -- about three times what the average director makes at major U.S. corporations.
BY JOHN DORSCHNER
[e-mail]

Shareholders officially elected former Gov. Jeb Bush to the board of Tenet Healthcare on Thursday -- a part-time job that will bring him over $450,000 in the next year.
(snip)

this, Bush has already received 34,667 shares worth $260,000, which he has registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He will receive a $65,000 annual retainer fee, plus $1,500 per board meeting and $1,200 per committee meeting attended. And finally, he will get $130,000 annually in stock for each year he's on the board.
(snip)

By putting an emphasis on stock compensation, Tenet is rewarding directors for the company's performance, Ramirez said. With a company like Tenet, which has had to deal with many Medicare fraud accusations, ``it's going to be harder to attract the kind of leadership to move the company forward, so naturally it's going to cost a little bit more to attract them.''

Ramirez thought Bush would be a great help to Tenet, with his background in government and business. "Just getting them off God-knows-how many watch lists they're on right now would certainly be a big step.''


Read more:
http://www.miamiherald.com/103/story/103128.html

Very cocky people, aren't they?

[FloridaJudy]

21. Jeb tried to privatize Florida Medicaid

At one time. It turned into such an expensive clusterf@*k, that it didn't last long: not only were doctors and patients screaming about the outright abuses, but even local politicians took notice.

Nothing this guy does would surprise me.

[bobthedrummer]

22. kick

[bobthedrummer]

24. RW Republican eugenics is killing us and demanding payment for the services provided.

:nuke:

[Judi Lynn]

28. Update on Miami Medicare fraud story.....

Feds & CMS Bust 24 in Medicare Fraud
by Barbara Kram, Editor

United States Attorneys and the head of Medicare have announced the results of a multi-agency effort to prosecute individuals and health care companies that fraudulently bill the Medicare program. On May 8, 2007, the U.S. Attorney's Office charged 24 individuals with Medicare fraud. Four additional individuals were arrested in a separate health care fraud scheme. This brings the total number of defendants charged to date to 42.
(snip)

On the morning of May 8, 2007, federal agents arrested 24 people associated with pharmaceutical frauds. The defendants charged participated in schemes to bill Medicare for expensive inhalation medications. They are alleged to have provided pharmacists fraudulent prescriptions for compounded aerosols. These are expensive, custom-made medications, which are supposed to be used only when necessary to treat particularized medical needs. Here, they were not used to treat any patients. In fact, the compounding of medication was done solely to defraud Medicare, and one of the men mixing the medications was not a licensed pharmacist, but rather an air-conditioner repairman. When the medicines were prepared, they were typically thrown in the garbage. The fraudulent prescriptions in these cases totaled more than $14 million.

Other indictments brought by the Strike Force outline various types of fraudulent schemes. In one case, defendant Eduardo Moreno, the owner of multiple DME companies, was arrested on April 7 after being named in a six-count fraud indictment. Two of Moreno's companies - Brenda Medical Supply, Inc., and Faster Medical Equipment, Inc. - allegedly billed Medicare for more than $1.9 million for services that were not medically necessary. The FBI has seized of some of Moreno's assets, including a new Rolls Royce Phantom worth approximately $200,000.

In another indictment, Barbara Diaz and Jose Prieto were charged with conspiring to defraud Medicare, submitting false claims to Medicare and money laundering. The indictment further alleges that Diaz and Prieto engaged in an infusion therapy scheme, where patients did not need the drugs that were purportedly used. From March 9 through December 31, 2006, the defendants billed Medicare for over $900,000 for infusion.

Seizure warrants have been used to take money back from bank accounts associated with the health care fraud activity alleged in the indictments. In one case, agents recovered more than $1.2 million from a corporate bank account after arresting Leider Alexis Munoz, the president and chief executive officer of RTC of Miami, Inc., an infusion clinic located in Hialeah, Florida.
(snip/...)

http://www.dotmed.com/news/story/3908/

[bobthedrummer]

29. Kick