The owner of a Florida addiction treatment facility has been found guilty of running an insurance scheme that charged private health insurers more than $58 million for services that were never provided and, in some cases, were not even medically necessary, the Department of Justice announced on April 13.
Carie Lyn Beetle, 44, a resident of Lake City, and a group of co-conspirators ran the illegal insurance scheme at two separate facilities that were operated by Beetle: Real Life Recovery Delray LLC (RLR), a substance abuse treatment center, and A Safe Place LLC, which did business under the name Halfway There Florida LLC (HWT) and operated as a “sober home,” according to court documents.
Prosecutors said that Beetle and her co-conspirators recruited patients by offering free or discounted rent and payment for travel to Florida to stay in and attend drug treatments at the sober homes she ran, including submitting to regular and random drug testing up to three times a week.
She and her co-conspirators would then submit insurance claims for the substance abuse treatment and urine testing services that the patients were supposedly receiving.
However, prosecutors said that in most cases the patients were not attending the billed treatment sessions and Beetle and those involved in the scheme would instead forge patients’ signatures on sign-in sheets to make it appear as though they had.
Prosecutors further alleged that Beetle and her co-conspirators billed “expensive medically unnecessary urine testing” that was “excessive” and not used in the treatment or reviewed by medical professionals.
Additionally, further evidence showed that Beetle knowingly laundered the proceeds of the fraudulent insurance claims when she deposited a check from RLR, officials said.
Beetle—who is herself a former drug addict and founded the substance abuse centers with her partner, Eric Snyder, according to MarketWatch—was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud and one count of money laundering.
She is scheduled to be sentenced later in 2022 and is facing up to 20 years in prison on the conspiracy count and up to 10 years behind bars on the money laundering count.
Snyder pleaded guilty in 2020 and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison but has not yet begun serving his sentence after agreeing to testify against Beetle, MarketWatch reported, citing court documents.
The Epoch Times has contacted attorneys for Beetle and Snyder for comment.
