Four Florida residents have been charged for their role in a Medicare fraud scheme involving physician kickbacks, the Justice Department said in a June 12 news release.
What happened?
- Between June 2019 and June 2020, Edward Cannatelli, Robbyn Cannatelli, Thomas Farese and Virginia Lockett were involved in a scheme to defraud Medicare by pushing unnecessary medical braces through a telemarketing operation.
- They used telemarketing to collect Medicare patients’ personal and health information, which was then used to create fake orders for durable medical equipment.
- The orders were sent to telemedicine companies that paid physicians illegal kickbacks to sign off, often without speaking to the patients. These orders were then used to file false claims to Medicare. To hide the fraud, the group used three different storefronts under their control.
- The four face charges including conspiracy to defraud Medicare, making false healthcare statements, paying kickbacks, wire fraud and falsifying records in a federal investigation.
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