Federal Fraud

Today’s “Fraud of the Day” is about a doctor from Alabama who is facing decades in prison after being convicted of 35 charges related to healthcare fraud, illegal drug distribution, and money laundering. A federal court in November rejected his request for a new...

Dr. John H. Johnson, an Altoona anesthesiologist, entered guilty pleas to conspiracy to defraud Medicare and Medicaid and failure to remit payroll taxes for employees of his doctor’s office and a local car wash business, Johnny On The Spot.

An Orlando medical doctor and an infusion clinic owner were sentenced to 64 months in prison and two years supervised release, and 90 months and two years supervised release, respectively, for their roles in a $13.7 million Medicare fraud conspiracy that involved submitting claims for expensive infusion-therapy drugs that were never purchased, never provided and not medically necessary.

The Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Disability Insurance Benefits Program provides monetary benefits to eligible individuals who have worked and paid taxes. (An individual must be deemed medically disabled and unable to work in order to receive monthly cash benefits). A Shreveport, Louisiana doctor committed Social Security Disability fraud...

Compounded medications are custom mixed for individual patients, and often carry a correspondingly high price tag. That evidently makes them temping fodder for healthcare fraud. Three Oklahoma marketers decided that potential profits merited hefty physician kickbacks in a prescription fraud scheme. (It appears their...

Millions of children are going hungry in America – 13 million to be exact. That means that one in six kids faces hunger every day. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) created the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to close the hunger...

College admissions are competitive. (That’s why high school seniors are encouraged to apply to multiple schools with the hopes of getting into at least one of their favorites.) When a Carmel, Indiana woman applied to her favored university and got rejected, she committed student...

As most Americans know, having access to affordable pharmaceuticals is a challenge. But circumventing laws to bring unapproved drugs over the border – and then charging the government – is never the answer. A Philadelphia-area doctor has learned this lesson the hard way and...

The average U.S. per capita income in 2016 was $57,617 according to the Census; meanwhile, gastroenterologists earned an average of $380,000, per the Medscape Gastroenterologist Compensation Report 2016. Greed is a powerful thing, driving a Texas physician—who presumably earned better than six times a...

Ocala podiatrist Dr. Michael Rotstein, 55, pleaded guilty on Monday to one count of healthcare fraud. Rotstein billed Medicare and TRICARE for a service that he called “removal of skin and muscle,” but which federal prosecutors said often was just “routine foot care, including the clipping of toenails.”