A health fair is an educational and interactive event normally designed for outreach to provide basic preventive medicine and medical screenings to attendees. Information sharing for the betterment of mankind. But Daniel M. Hurt found health fairs to be an opportunity to commit fraud. $97 million in fraud actually. Hunt paid hired marketing companies to host health fairs and to offer free genetic testing. By setting up booths at health fairs, Hunt was able to gather thousands of victims’ DNA and use it in a Medicare health care scheme involving unnecessary screenings to determine if a person was at a higher risk of developing cancer.
Hunt would send the swabs to medical centers which he himself had controlling interest in. Although these facilities were not able to actually conduct the cancer genome tests. But no problem. This fraudster just repackaged the samples and sent them off to third-party labs. A little extra work goes a long way. Hurt received at least $26.8 million from those schemes.
Within the three states, Hunt processed over 54,000 in fraudulent claims. That’s a lot of swabbing. In the New Jersey case alone, Hunt’s scheme involved submitting 25,000 fraudulent claims to Medicare, which paid $53.5 million him for unnecessary cancer genomic testing. Pennsylvania and Florida have not shared their numbers yet.
On May 7, 2024, Hunt was sentenced in federal court to ten years of imprisonment for health care fraud. He was also ordered full restitution and to forfeit a $3 million yacht called “In My DNA” and a multimillion-dollar commercial aircraft.
Shout out to the F.B.I, the Department of Health and Human Services, the I.R.S, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. All these departments were essential in catching a $100 million fraudster.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Florida man who ripped off feds in $97M health care fraud gets 10 years in prison” published by TribLIVE on May 7, 2024.
A Florida man responsible for $97 million in health care fraud across three separate schemes in Western Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida will spend 10 years in federal prison. Daniel M. Hurt, 60, of Fort Lauderdale was also ordered to pay that amount in restitution.
On Tuesday, Hurt’s attorney said in federal court in Pittsburgh that his client has already liquidated all of his personal assets to pay back nearly $30 million. “Mr. Hurt has made extraordinary efforts to address his actions and make things right,” argued defense attorney Colin Callahan in making a case for a lesser sentence.
