Home Health & Hospice Week

Miami, Detroit continue as hot beds of home care fraud.

The feds continue their fraud-fighting in the home care arena.

In Miami: A grand jury has indicted 10 individuals allegedly running a $12.5 million fraud scheme involving Marcialed and Sacred Health home health agencies, the Department of Justice says in a release. Owner Vicente Diaz and officer Daniel Ocampo “offered and paid kickbacks and bribes to patient recruiters in return for referring beneficiaries to serve as patients so that Marcialed and Sacred could bill Medicare for home health services that were not medically necessary and were not provided,” prosecutors say.

Patient recruiters Marta Curbeco, Margarita Rodriguez, and Pedro Peralta recruited patients for the scheme in exchange for kickbacks, the feds say. And the prosecutors went after beneficiaries in their 60s and 70s who also allegedly accepted kickbacks — Curbeco, Rodriguez, Elsa Capo, Santiago Sepulveda, Francisco Maysonet, Amira Galan, and Ana Rosa Santana.

The indictment seeks forfeiture of two properties and four Mercedes vehicles, the DOJ adds.

In Detroit: The office manager of a home health agency was sentenced to almost four years in prison for home care fraud. Nabila Mahbub also was sentenced to serve two years of supervised release and was ordered to pay more than $3 million in restitution, the DOJ says in a release. A year ago, a jury convicted Mahbub in a scheme where All American Home Care Inc. used patient recruiters and billed for home care services, particularly therapy, that were not medically necessary nor provided (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXII, No.15). Mahbub doctored and directed the doctoring of fake patient files to facilitate the billing of the therapy services, prosecutors said at trial.