Nearly 200 People Charged in Schemes Totaling $2.7 Billion in False Health Care Claims

Nearly 200 people have been charged in a nationwide operation investigating false health claims involving approximately $2.75 billion in losses, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday.

According to its National Health Care Fraud Enforcement Act of 2024, the DOJ filed charges against 193 defendants, including 76 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals in 32 different federal districts across the country.

The DOJ said that in a nationwide law enforcement action, the government seized “more than $231 million in cash, luxury vehicles, gold and other assets.”

“No matter whether you are a drug dealer for a drug cartel or a corporate executive or medical professional employed by a healthcare company, if you profit from the illegal distribution of controlled substances, you will be held accountable,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland . said in a statement.

According to the DOJ, the indictments allege that five individuals and a digital technology company participated in a more than $900 million fraud scheme in Arizona related to amniotic wound grafts and the illegal distribution of Adderall pills and other stimulants.

Prosecutors allege that two owners of a wound care company accepted more than $330 million as part of a plan to fraudulently bill Medicare for wound grafts. Nurses were pressured to apply the grafts to wounds on patients who did not need them, including some people admitted to hospices who died the day they received this care, The Associated Press reported.

The company’s married owners, Alexandra Gehrke and Jeffrey King, were arrested at Phoenix airport before boarding a flight to London earlier this month. Authorities say they knew the charges were coming because information was found in his home about the erasure of digital footprints, the AP reported.

The DOJ also alleges that corporate executives committed a $90 million fraud scheme by distributing adulterated and misbranded HIV medications, more than $146 million in fake addiction treatment schemes, more than $1.1 billion in telemedicine and laboratory fraud, as well as $450 million in other health care. fraud and opioid schemes.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said agents from his department were proud to play a role in the multi-agency investigation.

“Through their action, we in federal law enforcement send a clear and strong message – that we will hold accountable health care providers and prescribers who prey on their patients for profit and disregard the first rule of medical care: no cause harm,” Mayorkas said in a statement.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story