WASHINGTON — Medicare's Fraud Strike Force has charged 111 defendants in nine cities with alleged fraud schemes, HHS and the Department of Justice announced Feb. 17. Authorities said the operation was the largest-ever federal health care fraud takedown.
All told, the doctors, nurses, health care company executives and others charged in the indictments and complaints were responsible for more than $225 million in fraudulent billing, officials said.
Arrests were made in Miami; Los Angeles; New York; Detroit; Houston; Tampa, Fla.; Baton Rouge, La.; and in Dallas and Chicago, where U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Strike Force operations will be added. The administration's FY 2012 budget proposes expanding the multi-agency program, created in 2007, from its current seven cities to 20.
More than 700 agents from the FBI, HHS' Office of Inspector General, multiple Medicaid Fraud Control Units and state and local law enforcement agencies rounded up the defendants in Thursday's operation. In addition to making arrests, agents also executed 16 search warrants across the country in connection with ongoing investigations.
The message is clear, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said in a DOJ release: "We are determined to put Medicare fraudsters out of business."
A day earlier, Breuer announced charges against 102 members of "transnational organized criminal groups," including Armenian Power, in Los Angeles and Santa Ana, Calif.; Miami; and Denver.
While the charges range from extortion and kidnapping to firearms trafficking, two indictments unsealed in Miami allege health care fraud schemes running from 2007 to the present related to the operation of two medical clinics.
Read the DOJ's Feb. 17 release on the Fraud Strike Force action.
Read the DOJ's Feb. 16 release on the transnational groups.
