Vice President JD Vance is the country’s fraud czar. The Department of Justice announced six healthcare fraud convictions in the past three weeks. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had secured the convictions of six people in the past three weeks on healthcare fraud charges, totaling about $1.1 billion in fraud.
The cases were tried between May 13 and June 1 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Los Angeles, Detroit, New York City and Nashville.
The Justice Department announced the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division on April 7, and on April 3, President Donald Trump named Vice President JD Vance as the country’s fraud czar.
“The Fraud Division is laser-focused on investigating and prosecuting those who commit fraud against the American people,” a department press release said.
The department’s press release described the convictions and those convicted.
Brett Blackman, 42, of Johnson County, Kan., founder and CEO of HealthSplash, which owned Internet platform DMERx. Blackman connected Medicare users to companies that prescribed braces to patients it had never physically examined.
The scheme generated more than $1 billion in false billings, of which Medicare paid more than $450 million. Blackman was convicted of health care fraud conspiracy, kickback conspiracy and conspiracy to defraud the United States. His co-defendant Gary Cox, convicted at a prior trial, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Dr. Violetta Mailya, 45, of Glendale, Calif., collected more than $24 million from Medicare for Botox injections for migraines that she never delivered, including $19 million while her clinic was closed.
Some claims were backdated to before the patient had contacted her. Mailyan was convicted of nine counts of wire fraud and three counts of obstruction of a criminal investigation of a health care offense.
Ruby Scott, a licensed nurse and owner of Delta Home Health Care in Michigan, was convicted for operating a $1.6 million kickback scheme. She billed Medicare for services that patients were never evaluated for.
Scott was convicted of five counts of health care fraud, conspiracy, and four counts of paying illegal kickbacks.
Tony Brown-Arkah owned American Medical Centers, a Brooklyn substance abuse clinic. The clinic prescribed Suboxone, and if patients didn’t want it, they directed them to a van that would buy it from them. Prescriptions were signed by a nurse practitioner who lived in Florida and never saw or spoke with patients.
Brown-Arkah billed Medicare and Medicaid for office visits where he, a non-clinician, was the only person who met with the patient, and for services that were never provided. The total fraud losses exceeded $52 million across Medicare and Medicaid.
Brown-Arkah was convicted of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, 12 counts of health care fraud, conspiracy to illegally distribute narcotics, 3 counts of illegal distribution of narcotics, conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks and to defraud the United States, and 2 counts of receipt of kickbacks.
Olga Popovych managed a group of Broolyn physical therapy clinics who gave cash payments to patient transport drivers for Medicare patients. She was convicted of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, conspiracy to make false statements, four counts of health care fraud, and three counts of making false statements relating to health care matters. She billed more than $8 million to Medicare.
Heather Marks was a nurse practitioner who prescribed controlled substances to patients seeking pain treatment at Lifeforce Pain and Wellness, a pain clinic in Carthage, Tenn. Marks and others overprescribed highly addictive opioids, including oxycodone and oxymorphone, to Lifeforce patients.
Marks prescribed nearly a million opioid pills to almost 1,000 Lifeforce patients. Marks was convicted of conspiracy to illegally distribute controlled substances and eight counts of illegally distributing controlled substances.
