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A federal jury in Miami convicted a Florida nurse practitioner of health-care conspiracy and other charges for enjoying a key role in a scheme that swindled a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Medicare.
Elizabeth Hernandez, 45, fraudulently billed Medicare for greater than $200 million in orthotic braces and genetic tests that were medically unnecessary, in line with the Department of Justice.
Medicare is the federal program that gives health coverage to primarily older Americans.
Hernandez, who was found guilty Thursday by jurors after a trial that lasted several days, participated in a broad scheme by which telemarketing firms would contact Medicare patients to influence them to request unnecessary braces and tests, the DOJ said.
These firms then sent pre-filled orders to Hernandez, who signed them, attesting that she had examined or treated the patients although she had never spoken with a lot of them, prosecutors said.
Hernandez routinely billed Medicare for greater than 24 hours of purported “office visits” in a single day, the DOJ said.
And, “In 2020, Hernandez ordered more cancer genetic tests for Medicare beneficiaries than every other provider within the nation, including oncologists and geneticists,” the department said.
She personally pocketed $1.6 million in stolen money which she used to purchase pricey cars, jewelry, home renovations and trips, the prosecutors said.
One among Hernandez’s co-conspirators, Michael Stein, pleaded guilty in April to 1 count of defrauding america by paying and receiving kickbacks. Stein was sentenced to 5 years in prison in June.
Stein ran two firms, 1523 Holdings and Growthlogix, that paid health-care providers bribes and kickbacks to order genetic tests that were medically unnecessary.
Hernandez is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 14. She faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison on the highest count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, with lesser maximums for health care fraud and making false statements.
A lawyer for Hernandez didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
