Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell Delivers Remarks at the Press Conference to Announce a National Medicare Fraud Takedown

Remarks as prepared for delivery

Thank you, Director [Jim] Comey.  Today’s historic takedown is a prime example of effective, twenty-first century, data-driven policing.  Every day, the Criminal Division is more strategic in our approach to prosecuting Medicare Fraud.  We obtain and analyze billing data in real-time.  We target hot spots—areas of the country and the types of health care services where the billing data shows the potential for a high volume of fraud.

And we are speeding up our investigations.  By doing this, we are increasingly able to stop schemes at the developmental stage and to prevent them from spreading to other parts of the country.  And we are really focusing on bringing corrupt medical professionals in particular, as well as their accomplices, to justice more quickly than ever.  This approach has led to tremendous results, such as the takedown announced today.       

I also want to note that our approach is more than paying for itself.  During the three-year period from 2012 to 2014, the average return-on-investment for the Health Care Fraud Abuse and Control Act program was nearly $8 recovered for every $1 spent.  In other words, the American public is getting an almost 800% return on investment for every dollar spent by the department and HHS to fight health care fraud.  Of course, that includes only money recovered.  Those numbers do not reflect the money saved as a result of the very real deterrent effect of our successful fraud prosecutions. 

I want to thank the Criminal Division team and our partners at the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices around the country, the FBI, HHS and our many state and local law enforcement colleagues for today’s successful takedown.

I will now turn things over to my colleague Dan Levinson, Inspector General of HHS OIG.