Archive

May 4, 2021

After being convicted of running a $11 million healthcare fraud scheme, Brenda Rodriguez, the owner and operator of Texas-based QC Medical Clinic, has been ordered to spend 25 years in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release. As shown by evidence presented at trial, Rodriguez’s scheme involved paying doctors to approve Medicare beneficiaries for home health services, selling the approvals to various home health providers, and causing the providers to bill Medicare for services that were medically unnecessary, never provided, and/or arose from illegal inducements. USAO SDTX

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, FCA Federal, Healthcare Fraud, Home Health and Hospice, Lack of Medical Necessity, Medicare,

May 3, 2021

Two medical device distributorships, Medical Designs LLC and Sicage LLC, and their neurosurgeon owner, Wilson Asfora, have agreed to pay $4.4 million to resolve allegations of illegally inducing the use of certain medical devices, submitting false claims to federal healthcare programs for medically unnecessary procedures, and failing to disclose Asfora’s ownership interests or illegal payments made to him. The settlement was not the first involving Asfora; the United States previously settled with Sanford Health for $20.25 million and Medtronic for $9.21 million on similar claims. The whistleblowers in this case, Drs. Carl Dustin Bechtold and Bryan Wellman, will receive a $800,000 share of the settlement proceeds, while the defendants will all be excluded from participating in federal healthcare programs for six years. DOJ; USAO SD

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, FCA Federal, Healthcare Fraud, Whistleblower Case, Whistleblower Rewards,

April 30, 2020

CareCloud Health, Inc. has agreed to pay $3.8 million to settle kickback allegations involving sales of its electronic health records (EHR) software products and related services. In a qui tam suit filed by Ada de la Vega, the whistleblower alleged that between 2012 and 2017, CareCloud offered and provided existing clients improper incentives, including cash bonuses and equivalent credits, to recommend their product to prospective clients. For her role in the successful enforcement action, de la Vega will receive a relator’s share of over $800,000. USAO SDFL

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, FCA Federal, Healthcare Fraud, Whistleblower Case, Whistleblower Rewards,

April 29, 2021

Over two dozen defendants who were part of an extensive prescription drug fraud scheme involving Alabama-based Northside Pharmacy d/b/a Global Compounding Pharmacy have been sentenced to prison. The defendants included company executives and managers, prescribers, billers, and sales representatives who, between 2013 and 2016, billed insurers such as Medicare and TRICARE for massive quantities of medically unnecessary prescription drugs. In just that short period of time, the defendants caused insurers to pay nearly $50 million in medically unnecessary claims, with more than $13 million arising from improper payments to prescribers, and more than $8.4 million for prescriptions written out to Global employees themselves. USAO NDAL

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, Compounding Pharmacy Fraud, FCA Federal, Healthcare Fraud, Lack of Medical Necessity, Medicare, Other Government Health Programs,

April 23, 2021

Bobby Rouse, a former executive with Continuum Healthcare LLC, which owned Houston hospital Westbury Community Hospital as well as area mental health centers, was sentenced to ten years in prison following his guilty plea on charges arising from an unlawful kickback scheme. At the direction of Rouse and co-conspirators, Continuum paid kickbacks for the referral of patients to partial hospitalization programs at Continuum facilities, many of whom did not qualify for PHP services. In total, Continuum billed Medicare approximately $189 million for fraudulent PHP services, and Medicaid paid approximately $66 million on those clams. Fourteen individuals have been charged for the fraud. USAO SD TX

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, Criminal Proceedings, Healthcare Fraud, Hospital Fraud,

April 14, 2021

The owner of a Florida-based telemarketing call center, Ivan Andre Scott, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud in connection with a $3.3 million fraud scheme against Medicare. According to evidence presented at trial, Scott made telemarketing calls to Medicare beneficiaries to persuade them to take expensive genetic tests, paid illegal kickbacks to telemedicine companies in exchange for doctor authorizations, and received illegal kickbacks from laboratories in exchange for providing them with the genetic tests. DOJ

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, Criminal Proceedings, FCA Federal, Healthcare Fraud, Laboratory and IDTF, Medicare,

March 26, 2021

Following two whistleblower complaints, a former owner of a now-defunct diagnostic testing laboratory in North Carolina and South Carolina has agreed to pay $2 million to resolve allegations of violating the Anti-Kickback Statute and False Claims Act. Together with other agents of Physicians Choice Laboratory Services (PCLS), Phillip McHugh allegedly offered and provided benefits to physicians in exchange for referrals of patient samples, causing false claims to be submitted to Medicare. A second defendant in the case, former sales representative and manager Manoj Kumar, has already paid approximately $650,000 to resolve similar claims. USAO WDNC

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, FCA Federal, Healthcare Fraud, Laboratory and IDTF, Medicare, Whistleblower Case,

March 24, 2021

Two men in Mississippi have been sentenced to 7 years in prison and ordered to pay over $16 million in restitution to Medicare, TRICARE, and Express Scripts, as well as forfeiture of close to $1 million, for their roles in a multimillion-dollar healthcare fraud scheme. Dempsey Bryan Levi and Jeffrey Wayne Rollins, the operators of the Gardens Pharmacy, LLC, had previously admitted to soliciting and incentivizing recruiters to obtain prescriptions for highly reimbursed compounded medications, and soliciting and incentivizing doctors to authorize those prescriptions. USAO SDMS

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, Compounding Pharmacy Fraud, FCA Federal, Healthcare Fraud, Medicare, Other Government Health Programs, Pharma Fraud,

March 16, 2021

Jack Lee Stapleton and Jack Hunter Stapleton, the former owners of a Florida-based telemarketing company known as CV McDowell LLC or J&J Tel Marketing LLC (the Stapleton Entities), have agreed to pay at least $4 million to resolve a qui tam case by a former employee alleging violations of the False Claims Act. According to whistleblower Dwayne Thornton, the Stapletons solicited prospective patients through telemarketing calls, convinced them to accept compounded drugs regardless of need, and then procured prescriptions and sent them to compounding pharmacies that agreed to pay the Stapletons half of all TRICARE reimbursements. USAO MDFL

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, Compounding Pharmacy Fraud, FCA Federal, Healthcare Fraud, Lack of Medical Necessity, Other Government Health Programs, Whistleblower Case,

March 5, 2021

A substance abuse treatment facility and two inpatient psychiatric hospitals in Ohio, along with their corporate parent, have agreed to pay $10.25 million to resolve claims under the Anti-Kickback Statute and False Claims Act. According to DOJ, between 2013 and 2019, The Woods at Parkside, Cambridge Behavioral Hospital, and Ridgeview Behavioral Hospital—all owned by Florida-based Oglethorpe Inc.—allegedly provided improper inducements in the form of free long-distance transportation in order to entice patients to seek treatment at their facilities, and then submitted claims for services provided to those patients to Medicare. The case was initiated by a former client advocate working at Cambridge, Darlene Baker. DOJ; USAO SDOH

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, FCA Federal, Healthcare Fraud, Hospital Fraud, Medicare, Provider Fraud, Whistleblower Case,

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