U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaking on June 22, 2023 in Washington, DC.
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The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it has recently charged 78 individuals with $2.5 billion in separate health-care fraud and opioid abuse schemes.
The defendants allegedly defrauded programs used to deal with elderly and disabled people, and in some cases used the ill-gotten money to purchase exotic cars, jewelry, and yachts, the DOJ said.
Amongst those charged are 11 defendants accused of submitting $2 billion in fraudulent claims through telemedicine, in addition to 10 defendants charged in reference to fraudulent prescription drug claims.
In all, prosecutors filed charges against people in 16 states in cases that were lodged or unsealed prior to now two weeks as a part of the coordinated crackdown.
The defendants include “physicians and other licensed medical professionals who lined their very own pockets, including doctors who allegedly put their patients in danger by illegally providing them with opioids they didn’t need,” the DOJ said in a press release.
Attorney General Merrick Garland in an announcement said, “These enforcement actions, including against one among the most important health care fraud schemes ever prosecuted by the Justice Department, represent our intensified efforts to combat fraud and prosecute the individuals who take advantage of it.”
Within the scheme cited by Garland, executives of supposed software and services corporations submitted $1.9 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare for items that weren’t eligible for reimbursement, in keeping with the DOJ.
The defendants in that case include Brett Blackman and Gregory Schreck of Johnson County, Kansas and Gary Cox of Maricopa County, Arizona, who allegedly used mass telemarketing operations to sell the elderly and disabled expensive and unnecessary medical equipment and prescriptions, in keeping with an indictment in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The trio allegedly operated a software platform called DMERx that generated fake and fraudulent doctors’ orders in exchange for illegal kickbacks and bribes.
Cox was CEO of the corporate that originally operated the software behind the fraud scheme. He subsequently sold the platform to an organization where Black was CEO and Schreck was vice chairman of business development.
The defendants allegedly received payments for referring fraudulent doctors’ orders and prescriptions to pharmacies, suppliers and telemarketers, in keeping with the indictment. The orders and prescriptions claimed the doctors had actually examined or treated the patients when in point of fact the physicians were paid to sign the documents by supposed telemedicine corporations, the indictment alleges.
In lots of instances, the doctors had only a transient phone call with the patients or no interaction in any respect, in keeping with the indictment. In an effort to hide the scheme, the defendants allegedly removed references to telemedicine within the orders.
In a separate case, the DOJ also indicted Steven Diamantstein, the owner of Scripts Wholesale Inc., for a $150 million fraud scheme involving HIV medication.
Diamantstein, who lives in Brooklyn, Latest York, allegedly purchased HIV drugs at a steep discount from individuals who illegally obtained the pills by paying patients money and repackaging them on the market.
Diamentstein then falsely claimed his company had obtained the drugs through legal channels, in keeping with an indictment in U.S. District Court in Latest Jersey.
The DOJ also charged 24 doctors and medical professionals in cases related to $150 million in false billings involving the illegal distribution of opioids and lab testing fraud.