February 28, 2018

Rafael Arias, the owner of numerous Miami-area home health agencies, was sentenced to 240 months in prison and pay $66.4 million in restitution for his role in a $66 million conspiracy to defraud the Medicare program. As part of his guilty plea, Arias admitted recruiting nominee owners to falsely and fraudulently represent themselves as the agencies’ owners to hide his identity and ownership interest. Arias and his co-conspirators paid illegal bribes and kickbacks to patient recruiters to refer patients to these agencies, and submitted false and fraudulent home health care claims to Medicare for beneficiaries who, in many cases, did not qualify or for whom the services were never provided. DOJ

Tagged in: Anti-Kickback and Stark, Healthcare Fraud, Home Health and Hospice,