The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced recently that 10 people have been charged in a 26-county indictment for allegedly defrauding federal healthcare programs of $300 million.
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad E. Meacham announced the indictment Feb. 10. Ten people, including two medical doctors, have been charged in a scheme involving illegal kickbacks paid by lab companies to medical professionals for unnecessary medical tests, according to the announcement. The unnecessary tests were billed to federal healthcare programs, including Medicare.
“Anti-kickback laws are designed to ensure that financial considerations do not cloud physicians’ judgement,” Meacham said in the announcement. “The Justice Department is determined to prosecute those flouting our nation’s healthcare fraud laws. Patients – and taxpayers – deserve rigorous enforcement.”
The defendants include the founders of Unified Laboratory Services, Spectrum Diagnostic Laboratory, and Reliable Labs LLC, and several medical professionals, including internal medicine specialist Eduardo Canova, family medicine practitioner Jose Maldonado, and nurse practitioner Keith Wichinski, the announcement states.
Charges against the defendants include conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive healthcare kickbacks, offering or paying illegal kickbacks, and soliciting or receiving illegal kickbacks, the DOJ states in the announcement.
Canova, Maldonado and Wichinski accepted payoffs from the lab companies in exchange for ordering millions of dollars worth of medically unnecessary tests, the indictment alleges. The lab companies disguised the payments, some for hundreds of thousands of dollars, as “advisory services” and paid portions of the doctors’ staff salaries and office leases, according to the DOJ.
The defendants face up to 55 years in federal prison if convicted, the DOJ reports.
“Illegal kickback schemes corrupt the healthcare system," Matthew DeSarno, Dallas FBI Special Agent in Charge, said in the announcement. "They cause billions of dollars in losses each year, generate business for dishonest service providers and erode trust in our health care system."
