Home Health & Hospice Week

COVID-19 relief funds attracted fraudsters in California and Tennessee.

The feds are more serious than ever about rooting out COVID-19-related fraud.

The Department of Justice recently announced “criminal charges against 21 defendants in nine federal districts across the United States for their alleged participation in various health care related fraud schemes that exploited the COVID-19 pandemic,” the DOJ says in a release. “These cases allegedly resulted in over $149 million in COVID-19-related false billings to federal programs and theft from federally funded pandemic assistance programs.”

Artur Chanchikyan, owner and operator of former HHA Gentle Touch Home Health Care Inc. in North Hollywood, California, features in one of the cases. Chanchikyan “allegedly filed fraudulent loan applications with both the [Small Business Administration] and a financial institution seeking COVID-19 relief funds, falsely attested to the use of additional funds provided under the CARES Act Provider Relief Fund, and then misused the funds for his own personal use ... and the benefit of others,” the DOJ says in a release.

And Raymond Earl Vallier, former owner and operator of North Delta Hospice and Palliative Services in Tennessee, features in another of the cases. Vallier “was indicted with theft of government property and aggravated identity theft in connection with a scheme to unlawfully convert CARES Act Provider Relief Fund monies,” the DOJ says.

On April 10, 2020, North Delta Hospice received $107,568.03 from the PRF, although the agency had ceased seeing patients and billing Medicare and Medicaid by the end of September 2019, the DOJ says. Rather than returning the funds deposited, Vallier “used the name of the deceased owner of North Delta Hospice to falsely attest to the terms and conditions of the PRF… and wrote a check to himself and made a payment on one of his other company’s credit card accounts with the funds,” according to Justice.