Thread: 20 indicted in FL. for $200 MILLION Medicare fraud

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Twenty People Indicted in Florida for Health Care Fraud Scheme Involving Approximately $200 Million in Medicare Billing

Related Action Charges Four Other Defendants with Additional Offenses

WASHINGTON – Twenty individuals, including three doctors, were charged today in the Southern District of Florida for various health care fraud, kickback and money laundering charges related to their alleged participation in a fraud scheme involving approximately $200 million in Medicare billing for purported mental health services, announced the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services (HHS).

The 38-count indictment unsealed today in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida alleges that the defendants worked with and for American Therapeutic Corporation (ATC) and Medlink Professional Management Group Inc. According to court documents, the defendants participated in a scheme to defraud Medicare by submitting false claims for mental health services administered at ATC facilities that were medically unnecessary or not provided at all. The indictment alleges that various defendants paid kickbacks to patient brokers and owners and operators of halfway houses and assisted living facilities (ALFs), in exchange for delivering patients to ATC facilities. Various defendants are charged with participating in an extensive and complicated money laundering scheme related to the cash for kickback payments. Sixteen defendants were arrested this morning in the Southern District of Florida and are expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Miami later today. Arrests are expected to continue in the coming days.

ATC’s and Medlink’s owners and managers, Lawrence S. Duran, Marianella Valera, Judith Negron and Margarita Acevedo, were originally indicted along with the corporate entities, ATC and Medlink, in October 2010. A superseding 38-count indictment unsealed today in the Southern District of Florida charges them with additional offenses.

“As today’s charges reflect, defrauding the Medicare system was not an aberration at ATC, but instead part and parcel of its business operations,â€

This is nothing new in Miami. We all have the same comment more of those who claim to have made Miami what it is today. Every week we read about another medicare/medicaid scam. That is mostly why people here are screaming to end the wet foot dry foot policy as over 90% of those who get caught are Cubans.