Fraud & Abuse:
Feds Crank Up Home Care Fraud Busting
Published on Fri Jan 20, 2012
Medicare Fraud Strike Force racks up guilty pleas in three cities. It's not just owners who are facing serious jail time in the feds' recent busts of home care agency fraudsters. In a Miami case, the office manager drew a six-and-a-half year prison sentence. ABC Home health Care Inc. office manager and patient recruiter Lisandra Alonso pled guilty to teaching the owners and operators of ABC how to operate a fraudulent home health agency, negotiated kickback payment rates between ABC's owners and other patient recruiters, and distributed the payments, the Department of Justice says in a release. Alonso also taught nurses how to falsify patient records to support fraudulent claims, the DOJ says. Alonso was sentenced to a whopping 78 months in prison, two years' supervised release, and ordered to pay $15.3 million in restitution. Seventy-two-year-old ABC and Florida Home Health Care Providers Inc. patient recruiter Jose Ros and Florida [...]