Whistleblower News From The Inside -- January 19, 2018

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

The DOJ Criminal Division Released its “Fraud Section Year in Review 2017” – The Criminal Division charged 301 individuals, brought in $4.6 billion in corporate U.S. criminal fines, penalties, forfeiture and restitution, and total enforcement action amounts payable to U.S. and foreign authorities amounted to $6.8 billion. DOJ

Michigan Doctor Sentenced to Prison for $1.7 Million Health Care Fraud Scheme – A Detroit, Michigan-area doctor was sentenced to 24 months in prison for his role in a $1.7 million health care fraud scheme that involved billing Medicare for physician home visits that were medically unnecessary and/or were billed under unwarranted treatment codes that resulted in inappropriately high payments. Gerald Daneshvar M.D., of West Bloomfield, Michigan and his co-conspirators worked for Lake MI Mobile Doctors (Mobile Doctors), a home visiting physician company that provided doctor’s visits to purportedly homebound Medicare patients. While working at Mobile Doctors, Daneshvar billed Medicare for home patient visits that did not qualify for payment because the patients either were not sick or were not homebound. Daneshvar conspired with others to bill Medicare for the highest paying codes for these visits, even though the visits were short and perfunctory, or were unnecessary, the evidence showed. DOJ

U.S. CFTC sues three virtual currency operators for fraud – The U.S. derivatives watchdog said on Friday that it has filed charges against three separate virtual currency operators alleging the defendants had defrauded customers and broken other commodity trading rules, in a further sign regulators globally are cracking down on the emerging asset class. The lawsuits, filed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in a New York district court, come amid heightened fears globally over the risks that bitcoin and other virtual currencies may pose to investors and the global financial system. Reuters