WZZM13, a Michigan ABC affiliate, recently reported on a $1 million healthcare scam involving a physician’s assistant, who was caught not only receiving illegal referral kickbacks, but also prescribing drugs to his own romantic partners, to patients with whom he shared the drugs and to those he knew were reselling the drugs on the black market.
When investigators raided the physical office to which this physician’s assistant had referred at least five patients in exchange for illegal kickbacks, he refused to let that break his depraved, double-dealing spirit. Instead, he simply picked up where he had left off, with a different prescriber. (Despite his relatively inferior status within a much larger crime ring, there’s a reason this particular man is at the center of the story: He really does sound quite cheeky.)
Ultimately, federal investigators caught up with him, as they unraveled a plot that landed seven other doctors and physicians assistants in federal prison. When all was said and done, this poisonous P.A. was found to have billed federal programs for more than 30 pneumonia vaccines that were never provided and collected $1,000 in hidden kickbacks related to $18,000 in services paid out by Medicare and Medicaid. Not to mention the prescription drug dealing and abuse he facilitated among his wide-reaching social circles.
So the Attorney General dragged him to court, where he (perhaps, unsurprisingly) revealed a brazen disregard for the gravity of his crimes, in a particularly glib letter to the presiding judge. An excerpt reads, “Shame on me for being naïve, trying to work three jobs and not paying attention. In the future I promise to make the right and ethical decisions by learning from this.” Unimpressed, the judge sentenced him to fourteen months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release. Additionally, he was ordered to pay $18,000 in restitution.This man’s individual crimes negatively affected many lives, including his own, as did his role in a larger scheme that put patients’ well-being directly at odds with their health care providers’ financial bottom line.
The post Shame on Me appeared first on Fraud of the Day.