Home Health Company Charged with Medicare Fraud
The owner of two home health care companies in Illinois has been charged with Medicare fraud. Prosecutors claim that James Ademiju swindled the taxpayer funded program out of at least $5 million. Ademiju is charged with a single count of healthcare fraud, which is punishable by 10 years in prison. If someone was injured because of the fraud, penalties can be even higher.
According to the complaint, Ademiju owned and operated two companies home health care companies in the Chicago area, BestMed-Care Services and Adonis, Inc. Chicago has one of the highest Medicare fraud rates in the United States.
The FBI claims that Ademiju was using patient recruiters to find patients for his two businesses. We have long claimed that patient recruiters are a giant red flag. Legitimate healthcare companies don’t need to pay for patients. In Ademiju’s case, the FBI claims that Ademiju paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a marketing company that offered “free” nursing services to Medicare patients. While some patients legitimately need home care, those services must be authorized by a physician and based on medical necessity.
Physicians signing false necessity forms can also be criminally prosecuted or lose their medical provider license through Medicare or both.
In addition to paying for patients, court records also reveal that Adonis and BestMed-Care employees were falsifying nursing assessments to show that their patients needed continued assistance. (We remind readers that Ademiju is presumed innocent until proven guilty.)
Medicare fraud is a serious crime that costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Some providers have become so greedy that they perform unnecessary surgeries on patients just to claim more money from Medicare. No such allegations have been made in this case.
The government’s most potent weapon against Medicare fraud is the whistleblower. Most whistleblowers in the healthcare industry are billing clerks and nurses, although we have found EMTs, physicians and even patient recruiters willing to come forward. Even if someone has broken the law and were a participant in the fraud he or she may still be eligible for an award. The exceptions, of course, are those that directly profited from their crimes.
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Think you have inside information about Medicaid or Medicare fraud? Give us a call. Last year the government paid out $635 million in whistleblower awards. Our clients earned over $100 million. We help whistleblowers stop Medicare fraud and earn the largest awards possible.
For more information, contact attorney Brian Mahany at or by telephone at (direct). All inquiries kept strictly confidential. See also our home healthcare fraud page.