Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Miami Herald - February 3, 2007
John Dorschner, jdorschner@MiamiHerald.com
On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced that Diana Sotto, an owner of All Medical Billing Solutions, a medical billing company, was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years and one month in prison after being convicted on three counts of conspiracies to defraud Medicare, pay healthcare kickbacks and launder healthcare fraud proceeds.
According to the evidence at trial, a Miami medical clinic, Project New Hope, defrauded Medicare of more than $2.8 million between September 2004 and September 2005, prosecutors said in a news release.
The clinic claimed to specialize in the treatment of HIV patients. The patients were HIV positive, but the clinic fraudulently billed Medicare for dosages of expensive HIV medications, including Neupogen, Procrit, Acthar and Fuzeon, prosecutors said. Most patients did not receive the medication.
A FRAUDULENT PROJECT
Evidence at trial also showed that Sotto's company, All Medical Billing, submitted the fraudulent Project New Hope claims to Medicare and that Sotto received more than $600,000 in fraud proceeds, the majority of which she laundered through five shell corporations.
Five of Sotto's co-defendants pleaded guilty before trial to various charges in the same case. These defendants were Luis Manuel Fernandez, Maria Loriga, Beatriz Fernandez, Manuel Ivan Perez and Walter Lefurge, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
A sixth co-defendant, Sandra Galvez, was convicted by the same jury that convicted Sotto.
The case was prosecuted by assistant U.S. attorneys Marc Osborne and Jeffrey Marcus.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced the indictments of Julian Torres, a Florida-licensed physician, and Elsa Dominguez and Marcos Martinez, owners of a durable medical equipment company, Carib Med Services, in a Medicare fraud scheme.
The 18-count indictment charges the defendants with conspiracy to defraud Medicare and to commit various federal crimes, plus five counts of healthcare fraud.
Prosecutors charge that, from August 2003 through June 2005, Dominguez, Martinez and Torres defrauded Medicare through the submission of fraudulent claims for medically unnecessary medical equipment.
Torres was allegedly paid $20,000 to prescribe unnecessary equipment. Medicare ended up paying about $1 million for the unfair charges, the indictment alleges.
The case is being prosecuted by attorneys Kirk Ogrosky, Jeffrey A. Neiman and Robert DeConti.
$2.5M IN FALSE CLAIMS
Also on Wednesday, the office of U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta announced that Marcelo De Jesus Serrano pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud.
Serrano admitted to conspiring with others to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare for various services from 2003 to 2005 through the services of two local labs, Biocyte Laboratories and Washington Medical Laboratory, resulting in about $2.5 million in false claims, prosecutors charged.
Serrano agreed to forfeit about $1.2 million in fraud proceeds in an Etrade account, according to a news release. That case is being prosecuted by William J. Parente Jr.
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