Defendant Indicted on Health Care Fraud Charges
Tarek Abou-Khatwa, also known as Dean Addem, a 58-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., has been indicted on charges that he defrauded CareFirst, a health care benefit program, of over $2 million through a complex scheme.
According to the indictment, Abou-Khatwa created fake groups of insured individuals, including both fictitious names and real people with altered years of birth, to fraudulently obtain lower insurance premium quotes from CareFirst. He then had the CareFirst invoices sent directly to him instead of his clients, marked up the insurance premiums charged by CareFirst, and pocketed the difference between the two.
Abou-Khatwa was a broker for CareFirst until May 2011 and received commissions from CareFirst as his compensation as a broker. He continued to work through other CareFirst brokers after being terminated.
The indictment further states that when CareFirst undertook audits of the employer groups, Abou-Khatwa submitted false employee census reports and wage/tax forms to CareFirst to justify the listings of employees in the shell company contracts.
Abou-Khatwa was arrested earlier today and pled not guilty to the charges this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He was released on high-intensity supervision pending a status hearing set for April 10, 2018.
An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has committed a violation of criminal laws and every defendant is presumed innocent until, and unless, proven guilty.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and the District of Columbia Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking commended the efforts of the agents and investigators who worked on the case.
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Key Facts
- State: Washington DC
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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