Nearly 200 people have been charged in a sweeping nationwide crackdown on health care fraud schemes with false claims worth more than $2.7 billion, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday announced charges against doctors, nurses and others across the United States accused of a variety of scams, including a $900 million scheme in Arizona targeting dying patients.
“It doesn't matter if you are a drug cartel trafficker, a corporate executive, or a medical professional employed by a healthcare company. “If you profit from the illegal distribution of controlled substances, you will be held accountable,” Garland said in a statement.
In the Arizona case, prosecutors have accused two wound care business owners of accepting more than $330 million in bribes as part of a scheme to fraudulently bill Medicare for amniotic wound grafts, which are dressings that help to heal the wounds.
According to the Justice Department, nurses were pressured to administer the grafts to elderly patients who did not need them, including people receiving hospice care. Some patients died the same day they received the grafts or within days, according to court documents.
In less than two years, more than $900 million in false claims were submitted to Medicare for grafts that were used in fewer than 500 patients, prosecutors said.
Wound care business owners Alexandra Gehrke and Jeffrey King were arrested this month at the Phoenix airport as they boarded a flight to London, according to court documents that urge a judge to keep them behind bars while they await trial.
An attorney for Gehrke declined to comment, and an attorney for King did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press.
Authorities say Gehrke and King, who married this year, knew they would be charged and had been preparing to flee. At his home, authorities found a book titled How To Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish Without a Trace, according to the documents. judicial. In one of the suitcases they packed for their flight was a book titled Criminal Law Handbook: Know Your Rights, Survive The System, according to the documents.
Gehrke and King lived lavishly thanks to this scheme, prosecutors say, citing luxury cars, a home valued at nearly $6 million and more than $520,000 in gold bars, coins and jewelry in court documents. Agents seized more than $52 million from Gehrke's personal and business bank accounts following his arrest, prosecutors say.
In all, 193 people were charged in a series of separate cases filed over about two weeks in the nationwide health care fraud sweep. Authorities seized more than $230 million in cash, luxury cars and other assets. The Justice Department periodically conducts these broad anti-health care fraud efforts with the goal of helping deter other would-be wrongdoers.
In another Arizona case, a woman is accused of billing the state Medicaid agency for substance abuse treatment services that served no real purpose or were never provided, prosecutors say.
Another case alleges a scheme in Florida to distribute misbranded HIV drugs. Prosecutors say the drugs were purchased on the black market and resold to unsuspecting pharmacies, which then provided them to patients.
In some cases, patients were given bottles containing drugs other than those indicated on the label. One patient was left unconscious for 24 hours after taking what he was led to believe was his HIV medication but was actually an antipsychotic drug, prosecutors say.
