Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Kansas City Woman, St. Louis Man Plead Guilty to Medicaid Kickbacks

KANSAS CITY, MO—Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Kansas City, Mo., woman and a St. Louis, Mo., man pleaded guilty in federal court today to kickbacks that were paid to refer Medicaid patients to a non-emergency medical transportation business.

Sofisha Rajhane Broadway, 30, of Kansas City, and Emir Ramic, 34, of St. Louis, each pleaded guilty in separate appearances before U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner to the charges contained in an Aug. 24, 2011, federal indictment.

Broadway was employed by Logisticare Solutions, Inc., which had a contract with the state of Missouri to provide non-emergency medical transportation for Medicaid patients. Broadway worked as a scheduler at Logisticare’s network operations center in Kansas City, Mo., where she helped arrange transportation services with companies that had contracted with Logisticare to provide transportation services for Missouri Medicaid patients.

Ramic owned and operated Eurotrans Services, a transportation company in St. Louis, Mo., that contracted with Logisticare.

When Ramic complained to Broadway that he wasn’t getting enough referrals, she told him that if he paid her $150 per week she would direct additional Logisticare referrals to Eurotrans. Ramic agreed to make the payments to Broadway. Ramic paid Broadway with 13 wire transfers of $150 each from April to July 2009. In return, Broadway increased the number of referrals to Ramic.

Broadway pleaded guilty today to one count of receiving illegal kickbacks and Ramic pleaded guilty to one count of paying illegal kickbacks.

Under federal statutes, Broadway and Ramic are each subject to a sentence of up to five years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine up to $25,000. Sentencing hearings will be scheduled after the completion of presentence investigations by the United States Probation Office.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Randall D. Eggert. It was investigated by the FBI and the Missouri Attorney General.

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