The Department of Justice sure knows how to command attention. On June 27, 2024, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that nearly two hundred people have been charged in a sweeping crackdown on health care fraud schemes nationwide with false claims topping a whopping $2.7 billion. An astonishing announcement! Yet, the pieces of this whole crackdown are as astonishing. For instance, Alexandra Gehrke and Jeffrey King, owners of a wound care company in Arizona. They have been accused of accepting more than $330 million in kickbacks as part of a scheme to fraudulently bill Medicare for amniotic wound grafts.
Seems it didn’t matter what the patient was seeking care for. They were going to receive wound care whether they liked it or not. Nurse practitioners were allegedly pressured to apply the wound grafts to elderly patients who didn’t need them, including people in hospice care. Some patients died the day they received the grafts or within days. In less than 2 years, more than $900 million in bogus claims were submitted to Medicare for grafts that were used on fewer than 500 patients. At $1,800,000 per patient, maybe one of those claims should have been red flagged earlier if not immediately?
Something says that Gehrke and King knew they were toeing the line with regards to their scheme. At their home, authorities found a book titled How To Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish Without a Trace. And in one of their bags packed for their flight, there was a book titled Criminal Law Handbook: Know Your Rights, Survive The System. Important reading for these two. Gehrke and King, were arrested at the Phoenix airport as they were boarding a flight to London, apparently trying to disappear.
Outstanding job by the Department of Justice. Looking forward to more announcements from them.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “DOJ Charges Dozens of Doctors, NPs in $2.7 Billion Healthcare Fraud Crackdown — 76 medical professionals among the nearly 200 charged” published by MedPage Today on June 28, 2024.
Nearly 200 people have been charged in a sweeping nationwide crackdown on healthcare fraud schemes with false claims topping $2.7 billion, the Justice Department said opens in a new tab or window on Thursday.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the charges against doctors, nurse practitioners (NPs), and others across the U.S. accused of a variety of scams, including a $900 million scheme in Arizona targeting dying patients.
