NRI convicted in $463 mn healthcare fraud in USA
An Indian-American lab owner was found guilty for his part in a plot to cheat Medicare by submitting more than $463 million worth of unnecessary genetic and other testing. According to court records and testimony given at the trial on Wednesday, Minal patel, 44, of Atlanta, owned LabSolutions LLC, a laboratory that was registered with Medicare and carried out complex genetic tests. According to the US Department of Justice, between July 2016 and august 2019, LabSolutions submitted over $463 million in claims to Medicare, including for medically unnecessary genetic tests, for which Medicare paid over $187 million.
Patel himself collected nearly $21 million in Medicare proceeds during that time. He hatched a scheme with patient brokers, telemedicine firms, and call centres to send telemarketing calls to Medicare recipients while fraudulently claiming that Medicare financed pricey cancer genetic tests. In order to get signed physician orders authorising the tests from telemedicine companies, patel paid kickbacks and bribes to patient brokers after the Medicare beneficiaries consented to do a test, according to a Department of Justice statement.
Patel made patient brokers sign agreements that ostensibly said they were providing genuine advertising services for LabSolutions in order to conceal the payments. The complaint claimed that despite not treating the beneficiaries and frequently not even speaking with them, the telemedicine doctors approved the pricey testing. patel was found guilty by a federal jury in the Southern district of florida of one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud and healthcare fraud, three counts of healthcare fraud, one count of conspiring to defraud the US, and one count of conspiring to pay and receive illegal kickbacks for medical services.
Patel himself collected nearly $21 million in Medicare proceeds during that time. He hatched a scheme with patient brokers, telemedicine firms, and call centres to send telemarketing calls to Medicare recipients while fraudulently claiming that Medicare financed pricey cancer genetic tests. In order to get signed physician orders authorising the tests from telemedicine companies, patel paid kickbacks and bribes to patient brokers after the Medicare beneficiaries consented to do a test, according to a Department of Justice statement.
Patel made patient brokers sign agreements that ostensibly said they were providing genuine advertising services for LabSolutions in order to conceal the payments. The complaint claimed that despite not treating the beneficiaries and frequently not even speaking with them, the telemedicine doctors approved the pricey testing. patel was found guilty by a federal jury in the Southern district of florida of one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud and healthcare fraud, three counts of healthcare fraud, one count of conspiring to defraud the US, and one count of conspiring to pay and receive illegal kickbacks for medical services.