The US Department of Justice has unveiled profits ranging from higher fees for medical services to the sale of fake vaccination cards.
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The US Department of Justice has stepped up efforts to expose epidemic fraud in the health care system.
newspaper revealed The Wall Street Journal The US states that US federal prosecutors have indicted about 20 people in the past two weeks for engaging in various fraud schemes related to the Covid-19 epidemic, which amounted to about $150 million in false government claims, of which about $20 million was paid.
The US Department of Justice stepped up its efforts to uncover thefts from programs that were pumping billions of dollars into the US health care system after the pandemic in 2020. New cases were raised in areas across the country, providing a comprehensive look at how some are doing. Allegedly, health care providers sought to deceive Medicare and other health programs by charging fees for non-essential – or previously not provided – services while providing relatively inexpensive COVID-19 tests.
For example, a doctor who operated COVID-19 testing sites in Maryland allegedly billed Medicare for many of those tests, along with $1.5 million in other lengthy doctor visits they allegedly made, but which did not occur in Reality. The doctor, Ron Elfenbein, allegedly asked his staff to submit checks for compensation as services that required 30-minute consultations, because the more complicated services were “the bread and butter of how we got paid,” as he put it.
Miami nurse Elizabeth Hernandez allegedly asked Medicare for $134 million in fraudulent claims, using telemedicine rules, to sign orders for genetic tests and unnecessary medical equipment. It was alleged that people in New Jersey, California and Colorado sold hundreds of fake vaccine cards that were created to look like official records of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ms. Hernandez’s lawyer said she “vigorously denies the charges and that she did not knowingly participate in any scheme to defraud the healthcare programme”. The newspaper was not able to contact the other defendants or their lawyers for comment, or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kevin Chambers, who was chosen last month to lead the Department of Justice’s efforts to pursue Covid fraud, said the cases “involve extraordinary efforts to prosecute some of the largest and most extensive pandemic-related fraud discovered to date.”
In the wake of the pandemic, prosecutors and regulators were sifting through Medicare billing data, spotting anomalies and pursuing a range of investigations. Last year, prosecutors charged dozens of health care providers with pandemic fraud schemes totaling $143 million in alleged billing for government programs.
In some new cases, providers allegedly used the Covid test to obtain personal information and saliva or blood samples from patients, and used them to deliver more expensive tests. In one case in California, two clinical laboratory owners — married couple Omran Shams and Lourdes Navarro — were charged with health care fraud, bribery, and a money laundering scheme that involved more than $100 million in fraudulent claims about COVID-19 and respiratory pathogen testing. Prosecutors said the defendants also sought to conceal their role by laundering proceeds through shell companies controlled by Ms. Navarro.
Officials said the couple and other defendants exploited patients’ fear during the pandemic to conduct other unnecessary tests that had a more lucrative repayment rate but were not medically necessary. Ms Navarro’s lawyer said she would plead not guilty to the charges. “I have always tried to follow the law and provide appropriate and quality testing services to lab patients,” he added. “She looks forward to having her name cleared in court,” he added.
Transferring it to Arabic at the disposal of: Al-Mayadeen Net