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Texas Medicare Scandal Rocks the Healthcare Industry
According to a recent indictment, Bradley J. Harris, a certified public accountant without any medical licenses, has been charged alongside 15 other individuals in a massive healthcare fraud scheme involving $60 million in Medicare payments.
The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Dallas last week and unsealed today, charges Bradley J. Harris, 35, of Frisco, Texas, and 15 others with offenses related to their participation in the scheme.
The defendants charged in the indictment include:
- Bradley J. Harris, 35, of Frisco, Texas
- Amy L. Harris, 42, of Frisco, Texas
- Melanie L. Murphey, 35, of Fort Worth, Texas
- Patricia B. Armstrong, 33, of Coppell, Texas
- Mark E. Gibbs, 46, of Lindsay, Texas
- Laila N. Hirjee, 50, of Plano, Texas
- Syed M. Aziz, 51, of Frisco, Texas
- Reziuddin Siddique, 63, of Allen, Texas
- Charles R. Leach, 64, of Arlington, Texas
- Jessica J. Love, 37, of Gainesville, Texas
- Ali Rizvi, 49, of Carrollton, Texas
- Tammie L. Little, 55, of Brashear, Texas
- Mary Jaclyn Pannell, 29, of Krum, Texas
- Taryn E. Stuart, 32, of Sanger, Texas
- Slade C. Brown, 47, of Plano, Texas
- Samuel D. Anderson, 35, of Carrollton, Texas
Each indicted defendant is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Twelve of the defendants are also charged with at least one other count related to the conspiracy.
The indictment alleges that from July 2012 to September 2016, Novus billed Medicare and Medicaid more than sixty million dollars for fraudulent hospice services, of which more than thirty-five million dollars was paid to Novus.
Specifically, defendants submitted false claims for hospice services, submitted false claims for continuous care hospice services, recruited ineligible hospice beneficiaries by providing kickbacks to referring physicians and healthcare facilities, and falsified and destroyed documents to conceal these activities from Medicare.
“That tens of millions of dollars were stolen through fraud is shocking enough,” said U.S. Attorney Parker. “That these defendants used human life at its most vulnerable stage as the grist for this scheme displays a shocking level of depravity that this community simply cannot tolerate.”
The indictment alleges that Novus medical directors would sign certificates of terminal illness indicating that they had determined that a beneficiary was eligible for hospice services regardless of whether this was true or not; prepare re-certifications of terminal illness for beneficiaries already on hospice, which falsely indicated that the beneficiaries continued to be hospice eligible; and routinely give medical directors’ login information to others to log into Novus’s electronic medical records database to create and sign physician orders for services that had not been performed or had not been performed by the medical directors.
Harris would direct that beneficiaries be placed on continuous care, whether the beneficiaries needed this service or not, in order to increase billing and payments from Medicare.
The investigation is ongoing, and the U.S. Attorney’s office will continue to work tirelessly to bring those responsible for this egregious crime to justice.
Key Facts
- State: Texas
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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