Nationwide Medicare Fraud Bust Among the Biggest Yet
By: Federal authorities have charged 92 people in one of the biggest operations to date in a three-year crackdown on Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Authorities say the raids in nine cities involve some $432 million in fraud from what one source called “every kind of scheme imaginable.”
Nearly half the alleged fraud occurred in Miami, where 34 people are charged. According to local reports, a psychiatric hospital and a home health care operation were among the locations raided by FBI agents and agents of the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General’s office.
Another raid took place at Cropsey Medical Services, a clinic in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, New York.
The operation is the latest by a joint health care fraud task force led by the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. (Read More: Slideshow - 8 Ways to Avoid Finanical Abuse)
Attorney General Eric Holder and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are scheduled to hold a news conference in Washington at 1pm ET.
The task force, dubbed Operation HEAT, revolves around nine so-called “strike force cities”: Miami, Los Angeles, Houston, Baton Rouge, Brooklyn, Tampa, Dallas, Chicago and Detroit. A federal official familiar with today’s arrests say there were operations in each of the strike force cities.
In Dallas, authorities raided a home health-care business. Fourteen defendants are accused of $100 million in fraud. (Read More: Fraud Whistleblowers - Uncle Same Wants You)
And the Houston Chronicle reports the CEO of Riverside Hospital, Earnest Gibson IV, was arrested along with his son and four other people.
—By CNBC's Scott Cohn
@ScottCohnCNBC
