Home Health & Hospice Week

Plus: Hospice referral kickbacks in Florida and falsified DNR in Texas feature in fraud cases.

California isn’t the only place with new fraud cases. And it’s not just providers themselves who can face fraud charges.

In Illinois, Muhammad Ateeq of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay about $48 million in restitution, plus to forfeit a $2.4 million cashier’s check and over $1 million in cash, the Department of Justice says in a release.

Ateeq worked in the Islamabad office of Home Health Care Consulting, an entity that controlled Medicare billing and maintenance of electronic medical records for more than 20 home health agencies in Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, and Texas. Ateeq used a variety of fake identities to acquire and manage HHAs in the U.S, then caused the agencies to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare for home health services, resulting in over $40 million in payments for services that were never rendered, the DOJ says.

Ateeq’s money laundering conspiracy included using fraud proceeds to purchase expensive watches and other luxury items in the United States and then delivering the items to Ateeq’s associates in Dubai, the DOJ details.

Read on for more enforcement actions around the nation:

In Florida: Ernesto Espinosa has pleaded guilty to a long-running kickback scheme. Espinosa admitted to paying kickbacks to Medicare beneficiaries to recruit them for home health from 2010 to 2015, the DOJ says in a release. Espinosa coached the ineligible beneficiaries on what to say to obtain home health prescriptions from doctors and solicited and received kickbacks and bribes from home health agencies. Espinosa and the HHAs attempted to disguise the kickbacks by routing them through shell companies controlled by Espinosa, the DOJ says. As a result of this fraud, Espinosa and his co-conspirators caused Medicare to pay about $870,000 for the resulting bogus claims. Espinosa personally netted about $630,000 from the scheme. He faces sentencing on May 24.

In North Carolina: Professional Family Care Services Inc., a Fayetteville provider of Veterans Administration home health services, has agreed to pay about $45,000 to settle fraud allegations after “a recently convicted felon” employee, Tracey McNeill, cared for and lived with a patient who ended up in the hospital malnourished and with severe bedsores, then died. “The home health services provided to the veteran by his supposed caregiver were deplorable,” U.S. Attorney Michael F. Easley Jr. says in a DOJ release. “Our veterans should be honored and respected for their service, not abused for others’ financial gain.”

In Texas: RN and owner of Peaceful Touch Hospice & Palliative Care in Plano, Pamela Ekor-Tarh Eyambe, has been arrested and charged with falsifying a patient’s Do Not Resuscitate order, according to Texas news outlets. The Plano Police Department discovered the falsified form during an investigation into the death of a resident at the hospice. Ekor-Tarh Eyambe has been charged with tampering with evidence and the police have asked the public for any information related to the hospice.