The largest Medicare fraud crackdown ever has netted 111 arrests of suspects who defrauded Medicare of more than $200 million, the Justice Department announced Wednesday and Thursday.
The defendants allegedly falsely billed Medicare for $225 million, and were charged with crimes such as money laundering, conspiracy to defraud Medicare, identity theft, and criminal false claims.
The wide-reaching sweep, which nabbed health care professionals and executives across the country, charged defendants in nine cities: Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Tampa, Dallas, Brooklyn, and Baton Rouge.
“Through this operation, we have identified and shut down a variety of large-scale fraud offenses. We have safeguarded precious taxpayer dollars,” Holder said at a Thursday press conference according to the Justice Department website.
“And we have helped to protect our nation’s most essential health care programs—Medicare and Medicaid—which provide critical assistance to the most vulnerable among us: seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income Americans.”
More than 700 agents of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, which is a collaboration between the Departments of Health & Human Services and Justice, worked on the Medicare fraud scheme case, billed as the “largest federal health care fraud takedown in our nation’s history” by the Justice Department and HHS.
The arrests were an extension of an earlier Medicare fraud sweep that resulted in the arrests of 20 in Florida just days earlier.
“With a case against 20 alleged offenders unsealed Tuesday in the Southern District of Florida, we have charged 131 defendants—for fraud schemes involving more than $425 million in billings—in the last 2 days alone,” said Holder.
According to Reuters citing an FBI official, more than 2,600 health care fraud cases are still under investigation.
The joint DOJ-HHS Medicare Fraud Strike Force has been increasingly aggressive in pursuing these cases and has been successful in recovering taxpayer money, the federal agencies said.
“Over the last two years our joint efforts have more than quadrupled the number of anti-fraud Strike Force teams operating in fraud hot spots around the country from two to nine ... bringing hundreds of charges against criminals who had billed Medicare for hundreds of millions of dollars,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.
With the latest wave of Medicare fraud arrests, the government has said that it has sent a message to potential and ongoing fraudsters.
“Our message is clear: we are determined to put Medicare fraudsters out of business,” Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said.
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