MIAMI—The United States has filed civil forfeiture complaints in the Southern District of Florida against two purported durable medical equipment (DME) companies accused of fraudulently billing Medicare more than $33 million combined.
According to allegations in the complaints, Vida Med Center LLC and Med-Union Medical Center, Inc., both enrolled Medicare providers, submitted false and fraudulent claims for DME that were medically unnecessary and not provided as represented.
Vida Med allegedly submitted $14,110,820.00 in claims to Medicare and received $8,759,036.68 in reimbursements. Med-Union submitted $19,044,516.07 in Medicare claims and received $14,167,792.92 in payments. Notably, all of Med-Union’s paid Medicare claims were based on prescriptions issued by a single provider. The civil forfeiture actions seek to recover $967,760.37 and $10,014,325.40 respectively.
FBI Miami and Health and Department of Human Services-Office of Inspector General are investigating the cases.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Marx P. Calderón and Joshua Paster for the Southern District of Florida are prosecuting these civil actions.