SETX \u2014 Federal authorities say they have launched the largest health care fraud crackdown in U.S. history, charging hundreds of defendants and alleging billions of dollars in false claims \u2014 including multiple cases tied to the Houston area.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department said 455 defendants are accused of schemes involving more than $6.5 billion in false claims tied to taxpayer-funded programs.<\/p>\n
In Southeast Texas, prosecutors highlighted several cases centered in the Houston area. In one scheme, prosecutors said a Houston-area operation billed more than $16 million to Texas Medicaid for mental health services that often were not provided or were not provided by properly licensed professionals.<\/p>\n
In another case, a Texas defendant allegedly collected $3 million by billing for physical therapy while patients watched TV, used their smartphones or exercised on their own.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors also charged three people in what they described as a Houston-area \u201cpill mill,\u201d alleging cash-only clinics and a Conroe pharmacy helped distribute more than 3 million pills, including oxycodone and hydrocodone.<\/p>\n
The largest case mentioned in the region involves nurse practitioner Marcelle Yuki. The DOJ alleged she generated more than $906 million in false Medicare and Tricare claims by targeting elderly patients, including some in hospice.<\/p>\n
Authorities also detailed high-dollar assets tied to the investigation, including a $594,000 Ferrari that was purchased and one of eight seized vehicles, an $865,000 Bulgari necklace, a $4.6 million beach resort in the Philippines, and a $3 million certificate of deposit.<\/p>\n
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Officials said the alleged schemes targeted American taxpayers and the government programs they fund, including Medicare and Medicaid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SETX \u2014 Federal authorities say they have launched the largest health care fraud crackdown in U.S. history, charging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-355550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}