Kenneth Johnson, Medicare Fraud, New Jersey 2023

A Virginia man was sentenced to 19 months in prison for his role in a scheme that used the purported non-profit The Good Samaritans of America to defraud the Medicare Program of more than $525,000 by convincing hundreds of senior citizens to submit to genetic testing, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito announced.

Kenneth Johnson, 39, of Lorton, Virginia, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson to an information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and one count of conspiring to wrongfully access individually identifiable information.

His co-defendants, Sheila Kahl, 47, of Ocean County, and Seth Rehfuss, 44, of Somerset, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty before Judge Thompson. Kahl was sentenced May 14, 2019, to 13 months in prison, and Rehfuss was sentenced May 10, 2019, to 50 months in prison.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, Rehfuss used The Good Samaritans of America to gain access to groups of senior citizens in various low-income senior citizen housing complexes and persuaded them to submit to genetic tests without any involvement of a health care professional.

Rehfuss was a sales representative for laboratories, a fact he concealed from his targets. In order to convince senior citizens to submit to genetic testing, he used fear-based tactics during the presentations, including suggesting the senior citizens would be vulnerable to heart attacks, stroke, cancer, and suicide if they did not have the genetic testing.

To get the tests authorized, Rehfuss used advertisements on Craigslist to recruit health care providers for the scheme. The health care providers were paid thousands of dollars per month by Rehfuss and others to sign their names to requisition forms authorizing testing for patients they never examined or had any interaction with.

Rehfuss and his conspirators caused the Medicare program to pay two clinical laboratories for the fraudulent test claims that the scheme generated. They obtained and divided more than $100,000 in commission payments from the laboratories.