WASHINGTON – A Miami-area patient broker
was sentenced today to 18 months in prison for recruiting Medicare
beneficiaries as part of a $200 million Medicare fraud scheme, the Department
of Justice, FBI and Department of Health and Human Services announced.
Jean-Luc Veraguas, 51, of Plantation, Fla.,
was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Frederico A. Moreno in the Southern
District of Florida. In addition to his
prison term, Veraguas was ordered to pay $1.8 million in restitution, jointly
and severally with other co-conspirators.
On May 30, 2012, Veraguas pleaded guilty to
one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Veraguas admitted to serving as a patient
broker for American Therapeutic Corporation (ATC) and other health care
agencies. ATC operated purported partial
hospitalization programs (PHPs) in seven different locations throughout South
Florida and Orlando. A PHP is a form of intensive treatment for severe mental
illness.
According to court documents, Veraguas
recruited patients to attend ATC’s PHP program, among others, in exchange for
illegal kickbacks. Veraguas admitted
that based on his recruiting efforts, he caused $3.8 million in fraudulent
bills to Medicare. Veraguas admitted he
knew many of the individuals he recruited did not need the treatment they
purported to have received.
According to court filings, ATC’s owners and
operators paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to owners and operators of
assisted living facilities and halfway houses and to patient brokers in
exchange for delivering ineligible patients to ATC. According to court filings, co-conspirators
fabricated documents in patient files to hide the fact that the patients did
not, in the first instance, qualify for treatment and did not ultimately
receive the treatment for which Medicare was billed.
ATC, its management company, Medlink
Professional Management Group Inc., and various owners, managers, doctors,
therapists, patient brokers and marketers of ATC, were charged with various
health care fraud, kickback, money laundering and other offenses in two
indictments unsealed on Feb. 15, 2011.
ATC, Medlink and more than 20 of the individual defendants charged in these
cases have pleaded guilty or have been convicted at trial.
The sentence was announced by Assistant
Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division;
U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer of the Southern District of Florida; Jeffrey C.
Mazanec, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI’s Miami Field Office; and
Special Agent-in-Charge Christopher Dennis of the HHS Office of Inspector
General (HHS-OIG), Office of Investigations Miami office.
The criminal case is being prosecuted by Trial
Attorneys Steven Kim, Robert Zink and Alan Medina of the Criminal Division’s
Fraud Section. A related civil action is
being handled by Vanessa I. Reed and Carolyn B. Tapie of the Civil
Division. The case was investigated by
the FBI and HHS-OIG, and was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike
Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S.
Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
Since its inception in March 2007, the
Medicare Fraud Strike Force, now operating in nine cities across the country,
has charged more than 1,330 defendants who have collectively billed the
Medicare program for more than $4 billion.
In addition, HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, working
in conjunction with HHS-OIG, is taking steps to increase accountability and
decrease the presence of fraudulent providers.
To learn more about the Health Care Fraud
Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT), go to:
www.stopmedicarefraud.gov.
No comments:
Post a Comment