In the largest ever crackdown on health-care fraud by the Justice Department, criminal charges have been filed against 243 people across the nation involving $712 million in false billing from Medicare, officials announced Thursday.
Among those charged over the past several days are 46 doctors, nurses and other medical professionals as well as others accused of health-care fraud, violations of anti-kickback statutes, money laundering and identity theft.
The cases, which span 17 federal judicial districts, are not all related to each other. But they all involve alleged fraud on Medicare, the federal program that provides health-care benefits to primarily senior citizens, as well as on Medicaid, the government health program for the poor.