Send
A 42-year-old Sebastian County man has been charged with health care fraud in connection with an alleged scheme to defraud the federal government of more than $88 million.
Billy Joe Taylor, 42, of Lavaca, is the owner and operator of Vitas Laboratories LLC of Barling (Sebastian County) and Beach Tox LLC of Torrance, California. He allegedly used access to patient and medical provider information from previous lab testing orders to file phony claims for tests, including COVID-19 tests, that were never ordered or performed, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
More than $42 million in false and fraudulent claims came during COVID, the news release said. The criminal complaint was filed Friday and unsealed Tuesday. Taylor was arrested Wednesday and released on bond.
To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog:
In a narrative that seems likely to be repeated in the coming year, the DOJ Healthcare Fraud Unit’s (HCF Unit) contribution to the Fraud Section’s 2020 Year in Review emphasized its enforcement action in three areas:
Opioid epidemic
COVID-19
With an entire year of healthcare delivery during a pandemic now behind us, and a new administration assessing its priorities, it is likely that the focus on each of these subjects will be broader and deeper in the coming year.
Two Focuses of the Take-Down Were Telemedicine and Substance Abuse Treatment Facilities
The chief executive officer of a Michigan and Ohio-based group of pain clinics and other medical providers was sentenced today to 15 years in prison for developing and approving a corporate policy to administer unnecessary back injections to patients in exchange for prescriptions of over 6.6 million doses of medically unnecessary opioids.
Mashiyat Rashid of West Bloomfield, Michigan, was the CEO of the Tri-County Wellness Group of medical providers in Michigan and Ohio. In addition to the prison sentence, Rashid was also ordered to pay over $51 million in restitution to Medicare, as well as forfeiture to the United States of property traceable to proceeds of the health care fraud scheme, including over $11.5 million, commercial real estate, residential real estate, and a Detroit Pistons season ticket membership.
Published: 26 December 2020 26 December 2020
New York - The owners of over a dozen New York-area pharmacies were charged in an indictment unsealed Monday for their roles in a $30 million health care fraud and money laundering scheme, in which they exploited emergency codes and edits in the Medicare system that went into effect due to the COVID-19 pandemic in order to submit fraudulent claims for expensive cancer drugs that were never provided, ordered, or authorized by medical professionals.
Peter Khaim, 40, and Arkadiy Khaimov, 37, both of Forest Hills, New York, each were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Khaim was separately charged with two counts of concealment money laundering and one count of aggravated identity theft. Khaimov was separately charged with two counts of concealment money laundering.