Eighteen people, a few of them doctors, were criminally charged with Covid-19 health-care fraud schemes that netted lots of of hundreds of thousands of dollars from false billings and theft from federally funded programs, the Department of Justice said Thursday.
The costs, which span nine federal judicial districts, comprise the most important coordinated law enforcement motion within the U.S. targeting fraud schemes that “exploit the Covid pandemic,” the DOJ said in a press release.
One California doctor, Anthony Hao Dinh, was charged with allegedly submitting around $230 million in fraudulent claims to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration’s Covid-19 Uninsured Program.
Dinh, who practices in Orange County, was the country’s second-highest biller to that program, in keeping with the DOJ. This system aimed to offer uninsured patients with access to Covid testing and treatment, but it stopped operating last 12 months resulting from a scarcity of funding.Â
A number of the claims Dinh submitted were for services that weren’t rendered or not medically needed, prosecutors said. He also allegedly billed this system for the treatment of patients who were insured.
Dinh allegedly used greater than $100 million of fraud proceeds for high-risk options trading.Â
Dinh and two other individuals are also charged with allegedly submitting greater than 70 fraudulent loan applications that obtained greater than $3 million under the federal Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program.
One other defendant in California, lab owner Lourdes Navarro, is accused of submitting greater than $358 million in false claims for lab testing to Medicare, which is the federal medical insurance program for senior residents, to HRSA and to a personal insurance company.
Navarro’s lab performed Covid screening tests for nursing homes and schools, and allegedly increased its reimbursements by adding claims for respiratory pathogen panel tests that providers and facility administrators didn’t order.
Other cases announced Thursday involved suppliers of over-the-counter Covid test kits, the DOJ said.
Medicare last April began to cover without out-of-pocket costs as much as eight of those tests a month for beneficiaries who requested them.Â
But some suppliers allegedly “sought to use this system” by repeatedly supplying patients with dozens of Covid tests “they didn’t want or need,” the DOJ said.
A physician and marketer in Florida were charged with allegedly purchasing Medicare beneficiary identification numbers and shipping tests to beneficiaries who didn’t request them.
That resulted in $8.4 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare, the DOJ said.
Other cases involved the alleged manufacture and distribution of faux Covid vaccine record cards.
Defendants in those cases include three medical professionals working at a small midwife practice in Latest York, who allegedly distributed nearly 2,700 forged Covid vaccine cards to individuals who weren’t vaccinated.
The midwife practice was one among the busiest vaccination sites within the state, the DOJ said. But as a substitute of administering the Covid vaccine, the defendants allegedly destroyed vials of the vaccines intended for patients, the DOJ said.
Two people in Utah were also charged with allegedly manufacturing and selling about 120,000 fake Covid vaccine cards. Those defendants sold the cards across the U.S., especially in areas that had tighter restrictions around Covid vaccinations, prosecutors allege.
The DOJ said the people charged with distributing fake vaccine cards “intentionally sought to obstruct” the federal government’s efforts to roll out a nationwide Covid vaccine program.
“The Justice Department won’t tolerate those that exploited the pandemic for private gain and stole taxpayer dollars,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press release.
“This unprecedented enforcement motion against defendants across the country makes clear that the Department is using every available resource to combat and stop COVID-19 related fraud and safeguard the integrity of taxpayer-funded programs.”
The costs come months after the department created three strike force teams to boost its efforts to combat and stop Covid-related fraud. Additionally they follow similar criminal charges related to Covid fraud schemes in April 2022 and May 2021.
In its announcement Thursday, the DOJ said it had seized greater than $16 million in money in reference to the alleged schemes.
