Medicare fraud

The FBI alleges Khalid Satary owned and operated diagnostic labs that billed Medicare for expensive and unnecessary genetic tests. A reward of $150,000 has been offered for information leading to an arrest.

The two-week operation uncovered more than $6.5 billion in false claims submitted to insurers, according to the Department of Justice. Florida had 36 people listed as defendants, including 26 federal cases and 10 in state courts.

The Department of Justice charged 193, including 76 licensed medical professionals, throughout the country as part of the action. Many of those indicted are from Florida.

A recently unsealed lawsuit accuses Aledade, the largest US independent primary care network, of developing billing software that boosted revenues by making patients appear sicker than they were.

Elizabeth Hernandez, 45, routinely billed more than 24 hours of “office visits” in a day and pocketed about $1.6 million, federal prosecutors said.

Health experts are warning older adults about an uptick in misleading marketing tactics that might lead some to sign up for Medicare Advantage plans that don’t cover their doctors or prescriptions and drive up their out-of-pocket costs.

Oklahoma-based Carter Healthcare is accused of overbilling Medicare and billing for therapy that patients didn’t need between 2014 and 2016.

South Florida has long been a target for Medicare fraud. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced 24 people had been charged in a $1.2...

A federal judge is ordering a prominent Florida eye doctor behind bars to pay millions more in restitution.

A sentencing hearing in a Medicare fraud case against a prominent Florida eye doctor separately accused of bribing New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob...

Two Tampa-based Medicare Advantage health plans have agreed to pay nearly $32 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that alleged they exaggerated...

A prominent Florida eye doctor accused of political corruption was convicted of Medicare fraud Friday, increasing the odds that federal prosecutors...