Criminal charges were filed against 193 persons, including 76 doctors and other medical professionals, in a countrywide investigation into healthcare frauds that resulted in $2.75 billion in fraud, according to the US Justice Department’s announcement on Thursday.
The 2024 National Health Care Fraud Enforcement Action resulted in the seizure of almost $200 million worth of assets, including luxury cars, gold, and currency.
The United States Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has stated that anybody who benefits from the illegal sale of controlled narcotics would face consequences, regardless of whether they are involved in drug cartel trafficking, working for a health care firm, or in the corporate world. He went on to add that the Justice Department will take action against anybody who steals from government programs, deceives Americans, or puts innocent people at risk for financial gain.
Amniotic wound graft fraud of $900 million is one of the claims. The Department of Justice believes that four persons filed false treatment claims to Medicare, allegedly targeting elderly patients with terminal diseases.
The two defendants’ fraud operation cost Medicare over $600 million in just 16 months, with each patient paying over $1 million for these needless grafts.
In addition, a nurse practitioner from Florida was accused of sending 1.5 million pills of Adderall and other drugs to patients around the country without ever having a conversation with them. She took advantage of the servicer’s auto-refill policy.
With this policy in place, patients may get their prescriptions renewed after their first appointment, even if they didn’t speak to or see their doctor again. Because of this, the nurse practitioner began prescribing stimulants like Adderall to people with addiction and kept doing so even after their deaths from overdoses had occurred months later.
Mislabeled HIV medications were part of a wire fraud plot that was worth over $90 million; as a result, some people got the incorrect medications.
The federal charges are a component of the 2024 National Health Care Fraud Enforcement Action, which the Department of Justice leads. The investigation, which spanned the country, allegedly uncovered more than $2.75 billion in fraudulent billings and confiscated more than $231 million worth of assets, including cash, luxury vehicles, gold, and more.
Officials announced that a large number of fraud schemes nationwide were the focus of the investigation.
