The owner of a Pennsylvania hospice care business, Matthew Kolodesh, was convicted of Medicare fraud. Jurors found he billed Medicare for over $14 million in claims for patients that were not eligible to receive Medicare benefits. In many cases, the services were billed but never provided. Prosecutors say that Kolodesh spent $9.6 million of hospice […]
Seattle MD Faces Medicare Fraud Charges
A Seattle physician has been charged with Medicare fraud. Published reports claim Bruce Chen was falsely billing for visiting patients. While that may sound more like an oversight or paperwork error, the government says some of the patients allegedly seen by Chen were dead while at other times he wasn’t even in the United States. […]
Feds Take Ambulance Company Owners For A Ride – Health Care Fraud
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Philadelphia sentenced Aleksandr N. Zagorodny, 40, to 78 months in prison for a health care fraud scheme involving MedEx Ambulance, Inc. He was the former president of the business. His brother, Sergey Zagorodny, 36, was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his involvement in the health care […]
Anatomy of a False Claims Act Lawsuit
Recently we wrote about the record false claims act (whistleblower) award paid to pharmacist T. Mark Jones an his company Ven-A-Care. The sheer size of the awards – $597,000,000.00 is itself newsworthy and an inspiration to whistleblowers everywhere. Every time we write about a false claims act case, we get questions from readers. In this […]
Pharmacists Hit Whistleblower Lottery – Collects $597 Million!
The average Joe buys the occasional Powerball ticket hoping to win a few million bucks. T. Mark Jones, a pharmacist from Key West, decided to roll up his sleeves and become a whistleblower. His investigation of Big Pharma’s overbilling schemes saved taxpayers $3 billion dollars and earned $597,000,000.00 in whistleblower award money. Some say “crime […]
"No Prescription Equals False Claims"
“No prescription equals false claims,” that was part of warning issued by PharMerica’s own auditor after finding that many of the company’s were sending out drugs without a written prescription. Last Friday’s false claims act suit filed by the Justice Department in Milwaukee comes as no surprise. New details show the pharmacy giant was warned […]
PharMerica Whistleblower Suits – (Some Companies Just Don’t Learn)
[Updated through 2020] We originally wrote this post in August 2013. That is when the federal government filed suit against PharMerica Corp, a major long-term care pharmacy. The lawsuit was originally begun in 2009 by a former PharMerica employee turned whistleblower. Eleven years and 31.5 million later, the company still hasn’t learned its lesson. That […]
Heads on Beds – Assisted Living Facility Whistleblowers Post
[Post Updated through 2019] Whistleblowers play a critical role in the fight against rising healthcare costs. The biggest area of fraud – one that costs the government billions of dollars in fraud annually – is the Medicare program. Because Medicare is subsidized with tax dollars, healthcare providers that bill for unnecessary or poor quality services […]
Feds Charge 89 With Medicare Fraud – Whistleblowers Rejoice
Earlier this month, federal officials arrested 89 people in Miami, Detroit, Tampa, Houston, New York and Los Angeles and charged them with health care fraud. The action was a coordinated effort involving the FBI, Postal Inspectors, IRS, Department of Health and Human Services and local officials. Historically, many of these cases come to light because of […]
The Many Victims Of False Claims Act Cases
by Brian Mahany Anyone who reads this blog knows we are whistleblower lawyers – we represent people in false claims act cases (not the corporations committing the fraud). Our primary concern is making sure there is no retaliation against the whistleblower and insuring they collect the maximum cash awards allowed by law. Often whistleblowers face […]