Grimy Times has learned that a Florida man’s fishing trip to Pennsylvania waters has ended in a big net of justice. Daniel Hurt, 59, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was sentenced to 120 months of imprisonment, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay more than $97 million in restitution and to forfeit more than $30 million and the proceeds from the sale of a yacht for conspiring to commit health care fraud and conspiring to pay and receive unlawful kickbacks, First Assistant United States Attorney Troy Rivetti announced today.
United States District Judge W. Scott Hardy imposed the sentence on Hurt after he was found guilty of participating in three separate health care fraud and illegal kickback schemes. The schemes victimized both TRICARE—a program that provides civilian health care benefits for military personnel, military retirees, and military dependents—and CHAMPVA—a health care benefit program run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
According to information presented to the Court, Hurt and his co-conspirators paid illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters, who then solicited patients with health insurance. The patient recruiters created prescriptions containing patients’ information and a limited selection of expensive compounded medications, which were then referred to a telemedicine service and sent to a pharmacy owned by Hurt and his co-conspirators.
Hurt admitted that he personally received more than $4.2 million from this scheme, which caused a loss to TRICARE of more than $18 million and to CHAMPVA of more than $450,000. The scheme involved thousands of medically unnecessary prescriptions being sent to the pharmacy, which would then bill patients’ insurance plans thousands of dollars for the compounded medications.
Hurt also engaged in a scheme involving the payment of illegal kickbacks related to cancer genomic (CGx) testing, which was billed as if the testing were done in the Western District of Pennsylvania. Medicare suffered a loss of more than $25 million from that scheme. Hurt acquired thousands of CGx testing samples from Medicare beneficiaries and directed these samples to be sent to Ellwood City Medical Center, where they were repackaged and sent to third-party reference laboratories for testing.
Hurt’s sentencing is a result of his guilty plea to conspiring to commit health care fraud and conspiring to pay and receive unlawful kickbacks. His case serves as a reminder of the devastating impact of healthcare scams on patients and the healthcare system as a whole.
Hurt’s case is a reminder that the Department of Justice will aggressively pursue those who engage in such schemes and hold them accountable for their actions. The sentence imposed on Hurt is a significant one, and it reflects the seriousness of the crimes he committed. We hope that this sentence will serve as a deterrent to others who would engage in similar schemes.
The case was investigated by the FBI’s Health Care Fraud Task Force, which includes the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs-Office of Inspector General. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert C. Bauer of the Western District of Pennsylvania prosecuted the case.
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Key Facts
- State: Pennsylvania
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: White Collar Crime
- Source: Official Source ↗
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