Woman Indicted for Prescribing Medically Needless Health-related Machines in $8.8 Million Health Treatment Fraud Scheme | OPA

A Georgia lady was arrested yesterday in Hampton, Ga, on felony costs related to her alleged scheme to defraud Medicare by prescribing medically avoidable strong professional medical machines (DME), which was then billed to Medicare.

According to the indictment, Kateline Lavache, 53, of Hampton, allegedly approved medically avoidable DME for Medicare beneficiaries in trade for kickbacks and bribes from her co-conspirators. Lavache allegedly recommended DME without the need of conducting suitable consultations with the beneficiaries. Lavache experienced no prior connection with the beneficiaries, was not managing them, and unsuccessful to even carry out telemedicine consultations with them. As a final result of the prescriptions, Lavache’s co-conspirators submitted to Medicare close to $8.8 million in bogus and fraudulent statements for medically unnecessary DME, of which Medicare compensated more than $4 million. Lavache was paid a lot more than $123,000 in kickbacks and bribes for her participation in the plan.

Lavache is billed with one particular depend of conspiracy to dedicate health and fitness care fraud and wire fraud, as effectively as four counts of wellness treatment fraud. If convicted, she faces up to 20 several years in prison for the conspiracy count and up to 10 yrs in jail for each individual well being treatment fraud count. A federal district courtroom decide will identify any sentence soon after taking into consideration the U.S. Sentencing Suggestions and other statutory components.  

Assistant Legal professional Typical Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division U.S. Legal professional Roger Handberg for the Center District of Florida Exclusive Agent in Demand Omar Pérez Aybar of the Office of Wellness and Human Solutions, Office of the Inspector Typical (HHS-OIG), Miami Regional Workplace and Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Felony Investigative Division Specific Agent in Demand David Walker of the FBI’s Tampa Discipline Place of work manufactured the announcement.  

The FBI and HHS-OIG are investigating the situation.

Trial Legal professional Alejandro J. Salicrup of the Legal Division’s Fraud Area is prosecuting the situation.

The Fraud Segment leads the Prison Division’s initiatives to battle well being care fraud via the Health and fitness Care Fraud Strike Force Method. Given that March 2007, this system, comprised of 15 strike forces operating in 24 federal districts, has billed far more than 4,200 defendants who collectively have billed the Medicare plan for far more than $19 billion. In addition, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Companies, working in conjunction with the Place of work of the Inspector Typical for the Section of Health and fitness and Human Providers, are getting ways to keep companies accountable for their involvement in wellbeing treatment fraud strategies. A lot more facts can be uncovered at https://www.justice.gov/felony-fraud/well being-care-fraud-device.

An indictment is basically an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent till proven guilty outside of a sensible question in a court of legislation.