Arthur J. Fried, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s New York office, was quoted in Bloomberg Health Law & Business, in “DOJ Probing COVID Test Fraud Including Kits Sent to Dead People,” by Courtney Rozen.
Following is an excerpt:
The US Justice Department is investigating who bilked millions from Medicare by stealing the ID numbers of seniors in multiple states and ordering Covid-19 tests they didn’t want.
Fraudsters even billed for rapid tests ordered under the names of dead people, according to a health-care fraud prosecutor at the Justice Department who spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe is ongoing.
Federal investigators are just beginning to uncover the breadth of the fraud, which involved hundreds of thousands of tests. Seniors and their families in at least 10 states have been targeted, Bloomberg Government found. …
‘Most Reported’ Covid Scam …
Medicare equipment scams aren’t unusual, said Arthur Fried, member of the health-care practice at Epstein Becker & Green’s New York office. Often bad actors will send seniors supplies they don’t need, such as a back brace or wheelchair, and send Medicare the bill.
“Covid opened up another frontier for scams that had been in existence before then,” Fried said.
