{"id":386309,"date":"2026-07-25T15:17:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T15:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/386309\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T15:17:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T15:17:11","slug":"houston-man-sentenced-in-4-8m-medicare-fraudulent-billing-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/386309\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston man sentenced in $4.8M Medicare fraudulent billing scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A 53-year-old Houston businessman has been sentenced to four years in prison\u00a0for fraudulently billing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/health\/article\/medicare-ai-prior-authorization-texas-21118847.php\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Medicare<\/a> and Medicaid for opioid\u00a0addiction treatment services that were never provided to patients.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday it had sentenced Michael\u00a0Bregenzer and two men from\u00a0Kentucky, \u00a0Jos\u00e9 Alzadon, 62, and Barbie Vanhoose, 63, for their roles in\u00a0running a scheme that falsely bilked more than $4.8 million from the taxpayer-funded health programs. The three had been convicted of\u00a0conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances using the registration number of another person.<\/p>\n<p>Bregenzer&#8217;s sentence includes\u00a0three years of supervised release. Alzadon was sentenced to 60 months in prison, and Vanhoose to two years in prison.<\/p>\n<p>According to evidence from a March trial, the three ran the scheme through their Kentucky Addiction Centers, a treatment provider that operated in four Kentucky cities.\u00a0Bregenzer served as the company&#8217;s CEO, Alzadon as its medical director and Vanhoose as the billing manager.<\/p>\n<p>The group billed Medicare and Medicaid for medical services that were not provided or more complex and expensive services than those that patients received.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They also conspired to use the Drug Enforcement Administration registration number\u00a0Alzadon&#8217;s father had \u2014 which legally allows him to write prescriptions for controlled substances \u2014 to prescribe opioid addiction medication Suboxone for patients\u00a0Alzadon&#8217;s father had not seen.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, both Alzadon and Vanhoose were also convicted on two counts of aggravated identity theft.\u00a0All three were also ordered to pay restitution of $812,881.09.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 53-year-old Houston businessman has been sentenced to four years in prison\u00a0for fraudulently billing Medicare and Medicaid for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-386309","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\/386309","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=386309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}