Feds in Jacksonville settle $250 million in Medicare fraud

Four men in eight states received reduced sentences for their roles Medicare fraud steal after helping authorities uncover other accused fraudsters deceive the government approximately $250 million.

“There aren’t many comparable cases like this,” Assistant U.S. Attorney said. David Mesrobian he told U.S. Chief Judge Timothy Corrigan during a hearing in Jacksonville federal court on Tuesday.

The men will serve sentences ranging from probation to 41 months behind bars and are committed to repaying $54.3 million in Medicare payments for frauds in the government health care program, including now-closed businesses. Therapeutic Pharmacy on Merrill Road in Arlington.

Sentencing guidelines recommended a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, but Mesrobian asked the judge for a lesser sentence because every man “significant help” He had helped investigators build cases against other criminals for more than a year. Twenty or more suspected fraud operators from Miami to Detroit now being suedThe suspects are facing impending indictments or have already pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate, the prosecutor said.

“Everybody knew there was no point in fighting,” Mesrobian told the judge about the guilty plea, following investigations that included secret meetings and nearly 40 secretly recorded conversations with some of the men that were tolerated.

court records showed Between 2019 and 2021, the gang, led by South Florida businessman Luis LaCerda, traveled from New York to Battle Creek, Mich., to South Bend, Ind. and Murfreesboro, Tenn. He said he filed nearly 140,000 fraudulent claims for Medicare reimbursement from pharmacies in locations as far away as Murfreesboro, Tenn.

To get reimbursement, members of the public arranged for Medicare enrollees to pose as patients and obtain expensive prescriptions. working doctors for fraud telemedicine companies He never examined patients in person and often did not even speak to them on the phone, according to court records.

LaCerda operated a telemarketing call center to recruit fake patients whose names were sometimes repeated through the ring’s pharmacies, according to a plea agreement he signed in 2022, and Mesrobian told the judge that some patients received 50, 80, even 120 prescriptions they didn’t need. .

According to court documents, LaCerda remained involved in the day-to-day operations of the pharmacies; He sweated details like the amounts stores filled for antifungal and psoriasis prescriptions because those drugs command higher reimbursements from Medicare.

The plea agreement stated that LaCerda owned shares in some pharmacies and obtained approximately $15.6 million from Medicare fraud.

Before learning their sentences, gang members appeared before the judge one by one and explained their crimes.

“I stole from the seniors and I’m sorry about that,” Omar Solari, another key player in the group, told Corrigan. “One day I will have to explain my crime to my children, and I don’t know how to do that.” Another said he “didn’t have the courage to tell my parents” and had not yet told them he was in trouble with the law.

Corrigan sentenced LaCerda to 41 months in prison and Solari to 30 months, while two other South Florida men with smaller roles — Michael Murphy and LaCerda’s cousin Joelson Viveros, who was hired to relocate from Brazil for the pharmacy operation — were sentenced to 15 months, respectively. sentenced to one month in prison and five years probation. Viveros, a civil engineer in Brazil, may also be deported.

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