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301 People Charged With $900 Million in False Medicare Billings

— Largest sweep since government fraud team began in 2007

MedpageToday

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration announced the largest nationwide healthcare fraud takedown in 9 years, with .

The Medicare Fraud Strike Force said Wednesday that it had charged 301 defendants in 36 districts with a total of $900 million in fraudulent billings, according to a .

Those facing charges include 61 healthcare professionals, among them 28 physicians as well as nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists, and home healthcare providers.

"[T]his is the largest arrest in Medicare fraud strike force's history, both in terms of the number of individuals, the dollar amounts and the number of districts," said Health and Human Services , during a press conference on Wednesday.

The Strike Force, a collaboration between the Justice and HHS departments, began in 2007 and has charged more than 2,900 individuals with $8.9 billion in fraudulent billings. Burwell noted that its conviction rate stands at 95%.

"These numbers prove that we are finding the people who try to defraud the taxpayers and we are bringing them to justice," she said.

The Attorney General's office warned of a new trend involving theft or "renting" of doctors' and patients' identity cards, and an increase in fraud related to compounded medications.

Regarding new kinds of fraud, Assistant Attorney General , explained that "doctors' IDs are sometimes stolen [and] doctors sometimes are participants in the fraud."

Patients' IDs have also been stolen and some patients are "voluntarily selling or renting" their IDs.

More than 60 of those arrested were charged with fraud related to the Medicare Part D drugs benefit, "the fastest growing component of the Medicare program," the Justice Department said.

, highlighted one group of alleged fraudsters who took bribes and kickbacks to pack a network of clinics in Brooklyn, N.Y., then delivered medically unnecessary treatment and pocketed $38 million in Medicare and Medicaid funds. That money was later laundered through shell companies.

She also spoke of a Detroit clinic that served as a front for "a narcotics diversion scheme," and an employee at a state health agency in Georgia who took bribes in return for recommending unqualified healthcare providers be approved for positions.

Lynch stressed that healthcare fraud is not "abstract" or "benign" and that fraudsters behavior is truly harmful.

"They target real people, many of them in need of significant medical care. They promise effective cures and therapies, but they provide none. And above all, they abuse the basic bonds of trust between doctor and patient, between pharmacist and doctor and between taxpayer and government, and they pervert them to their own ends."