Eight Charged For Participating in Scheme to Defraud Medicare

Two Los Angeles doctors and six other individuals have been charged by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for their participation in a scheme that submitted more than $14 million in false claims to Medicare, states a May 2, 2012, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) news release. According to the indictment, the doctors wrote fraudulent prescriptions for enteral nutrition for patients who did not have feeding tubes. The individual who managed the clinic where the two doctors practiced allegedly received kickbacks in exchange for referring the prescriptions to a medical supply company owned by one of the other defendants. The owner of the supply company then fraudulently billed Medicare for the enteral nutrition, even though it was not medically necessary and was not delivered to patients in the quantities specified to Medicare.