Louisiana Health Care Company Owner and Recruiter Plead Guilty to Medicare Fraud Scheme

WASHINGTON – Two Baton Rouge, La., residents have pleaded guilty for their role in a Medicare fraud scheme, which allegedly involved more than $21 million, announced the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the FBI and the Louisiana State Attorney General’s Office. 

Henry Jones, the owner of four medical equipment companies, pleaded guilty yesterday before U.S. District Judge James J. Brady in the Middle District of Louisiana to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to pay and receive healthcare kickbacks. Mary Bessie, one of Jones’ co-conspirators, pleaded guilty on Jan. 11, 2012, before Judge Brady to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to pay and receive healthcare kickbacks.

Jones admitted that between 2004 and 2009, he owned and operated four companies that were licensed to supply durable medical equipment (DME) to Medicare beneficiaries. Jones hired patient recruiters to obtain prescriptions for medical equipment that was medically unnecessary. The patient recruiters obtained beneficiary information and then asked the beneficiaries’ primary care physicians for prescriptions for orthotic equipment, power wheelchairs, wheelchair accessories and other medical equipment. When the beneficiaries’ physicians were unwilling to provide medically unnecessary prescriptions, the patient recruiters asked other physicians to write prescriptions based on cursory examinations of the patients. The recruiters then provided the prescriptions to Jones, who billed them to Medicare and paid the recruiters illegal kickbacks for each prescription obtained.

Bessie admitted that from 2004 to 2009, she and her co-conspirators solicited and received kickbacks from Jones in return for medically unnecessary prescriptions for Medicare beneficiaries. From 2004 to 2009, Bessie was paid kickbacks, and Bessie aided and abetted the payment of kickbacks in the form of checks totaling $82,230.

Sentencing dates have not yet been set. The maximum prison sentence for each count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud is 10 years. The maximum prison sentence for each count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to pay and receive health care kickbacks is five years.

The pleas were announced today by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Donald J. Cazayoux Jr. of the Middle District of Louisiana; Mike Fields, Special Agent-in-Charge of Dallas Region for the HHS Office of the Inspector General (HHS-OIG); David Welker, Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI’s New Orleans division; and Louisiana State Attorney General James Buddy Caldwell.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys David Maria and Abigail Taylor and Assistant Chief William Pericak of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section. The case was investigated by the FBI, HHS-OIG and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of the Louisiana State Attorney General’s Office (MFCU), and was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Middle District of Louisiana.

Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in nine locations have charged more than 1,160 defendants that collectively have billed the Medicare program for more than $2.9 billion. In addition, HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with the HHS-OIG, are taking steps to increase accountability and decrease the presence of fraudulent providers.

To learn more about the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT), go to www.stopmedicarefraud.gov .