A Detroit-area man plead guilty last week to conspiracy to commit health care fraud in an elaborate kickback operation to recruit Medicare beneficiaries to a clinic owned by his co-conspirators. According to the U.S. Departments of Justice (“DOJ”) and Health and Human Services (“HHS”), Melvin Young recruited Medicare beneficiaries to become patients at Ritecare, LLC, and provided transportation for those patients to the clinic. Young’s co-conspirators, the owners and operators of Ritecare, provided Young with funds he then used to pay the patients he recruited. Ritecare typically paid Young a kickback of $100-150 per Medicare beneficiary, and Young passed on about half to the patient, keeping $50-75 for himself.
Perhaps more startling, patients were required to submit to medically unnecessary testing in order to receive their kickback. Young admits tutoring the patients to claim certain symptoms they didn’t actually experience, which false symptoms were included in their medical records to justify the tests to Medicare.
The case was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, and investigated by the FBI and HHS-Office of Inspector General.
For more information on healthcare government investigations contact Robert S. Iwrey, Esq. at (248) 996-8510.