U.S. Attorney’s Office Collects Over $18 Million in Civil and Criminal Actions and Over $18 Million More in Asset Forfeiture Actions in Fiscal Year 2023

RALEIGH, N.C. – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina (USAO-EDNC) collected $18,157,710.06 in criminal and civil actions in Fiscal Year (FY) 2023. Of this amount, $11,126,086.93 was collected in criminal actions and $7,031,623.13 was collected in civil actions. 

Additionally, EDNC worked with other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and components of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to collect an additional $72,909.66 in cases pursued jointly by these offices. This amount was collected in criminal actions.

“We are committed to using every tool available to aggressively collect restitution for victims, criminal fines, and recover taxpayer dollars lost to fraud and owed to government agencies,” said U.S. Attorney Michael Easley.  “We are proud of the men and women in our office who have worked so hard to ensure justice through their collection efforts which ultimately restore funds to crime victims and support law enforcement.”

The successful collection efforts included the collection of substantial funds from joint and several co-defendants, George Garven, William Davis, and Robert Helms, fully satisfying a criminal restitution judgment awarding $1,850,442.00 to Baker Roofing Company (BRC), the victim of a fraudulent contract billing scheme. Specifically, BRC hired Garven in 2011 to serve as the Vice President and General Manager of its Charlotte, North Carolina, branch office.  In 2014, Helms and Davis partnered together to provide roofing subcontracting services to BRC through Davis’s business, R&K Davis Holdings (R&K).  Between 2015 and 2020, R&K was used as a vehicle to fraudulently bill BRC for subcontracting work that was never performed.  Among other things, Garven obligated BRC to pay R&K by generating fake invoices and subcontracts in R&K’s name.  The criminal proceeds were funneled into business bank accounts controlled by Helms and Davis and then disbursed to Garven in various forms, including gift cards and checks.  The checks included fraudulent memo lines to make it appear they were related to legitimate business.  Garven also directed Helms and Davis to use the embezzled funds to pay contractors to perform work on Garven’s residential properties.  In furtherance of the scheme, Garven paid Helms and Davis each approximately $140,000 in cash. EDNC ultimately collected the full restitution amount from the defendants.  An earlier press release about the underlying criminal case can be found at https://www.justice.gov/usao-ednc/pr/co-conspirators-sentenced-stealing-over-18-million-fake-billing-scheme.

In another example of successful enforcement, EDNC fully collected on a False Claims Act judgment in excess of $1 million against Jeffrey G. Hedges, related to false healthcare billing practices.  Specifically, the government alleged that under Hedges’ control, a medical clinic located in Durham, North Carolina, systematically defrauded the Medicare Program in a variety of ways.  But perhaps most egregiously of all, the clinic almost always billed medical services performed by non-physicians under the higher billing rate of the clinic’s nominal owner and medical director, even though she did not actually treat patients and was hardly ever physically present when services were provided.  Based on evidence presented by the government, the Court concluded that Hedges and one of his companies violated the False Claims Act with respect to billing under the medical director and ordered them to pay $1,097,975.24 to the United States.  After the Court entered judgment against Hedges and his company, the United States demanded payment, but Hedges failed to comply.  The government therefore initiated enforced collection, obtained writs of garnishment and execution to liquidate funds and property, and moved for a statutory 10-percent surcharge, which the Court awarded.  In the end, Hedges paid the United States a total of $1,207,772.76, which fully satisfied the False Claims Act judgment and the 10-percent surcharge.

The USAO-EDNC along with the department’s litigating divisions, are responsible for enforcing and collecting civil and criminal debts owed to the United States and criminal debts owed to federal crime victims. The law requires defendants to pay restitution to victims of certain federal crimes who have suffered a physical injury or financial loss. While restitution is paid to the victim, criminal fines and felony assessments are paid to the department’s Crime Victims Fund, which distributes the funds collected to federal and state victim compensation and victim assistance programs.

Additionally, the USAO-EDNC, working with partner agencies and divisions, collected $18,067,902 in asset forfeiture actions in FY 2023.

The EDNC’s successful forfeiture efforts included the criminal forfeiture of $4,635,346.24 in property derived from or traceable to health care fraud.  Tanya Parrish Grant was criminally indicted on June 16, 2021, and charged with defrauding Medicare by submitting false and fraudulent claims for Durable Medical Equipment.  After conviction, Grant was ordered to pay a forfeiture money judgment of $6,449,155.09, representing the total gross proceeds that she wrongfully obtained as a result of the fraud.  Of this amount, law enforcement agents and financial investigators were able to trace criminally derived funds into real estate, numerous bank accounts, luxury vehicles and other personal property valued at approximately $4.6 million, which the government was able to seize, liquidate, and apply toward the forfeiture money judgment.  Earlier press releases about the underlying criminal case can be found at https://www.justice.gov/usao-ednc/pr/ceo-raleigh-healthcare-company-pleads-guilty-multi-million-dollar-healthcare-fraud and https://www.justice.gov/usao-ednc/pr/ceo-raleigh-healthcare-company-sentenced-80-months-prison-multi-million-dollar.

In another example of a successful forfeiture effort in FY 2023, the EDNC civilly forfeited $198,400.47 seized from a bank account containing proceeds of a business-email-compromise scheme, where one or more criminal fraudsters used a spoofed email to fraudulently request that an eastern North Carolina law firm update bank account information for a legitimate real estate closing.  Once the victim law firm updated the account information, real estate closing funds were diverted into a fraudulent account which was the subject of the civil forfeiture proceeding. The U.S. Secret Service was notified of the fraud and worked with the USAO-EDNC to freeze, seize, and forfeit the entire balance of the fraudulent account as proceeds traceable to wire fraud. 

Forfeited assets deposited into the DOJ Assets Forfeiture Fund are used to restore funds to crime victims and for a variety of law enforcement purposes.  The DOJ, for instance, restored $6,389,937 of forfeited assets in FY 2023, which is used to compensate the victims of crimes prosecuted by this office.