DOJ Probing Covid Test Fraud Including Kits Sent to Dead People

[yuna628 9,671]

There's a couple reasons why I'm sharing this story. You see, I've been down the rabbit hole these past few weeks, when a relative received a mysterious package they didn't order in the mail. Inside were very expired, very tampered looking COVID test kits. I was very alarmed, so me and a few tech buddies got together and did some digging as to just who these scumbags were. Turns out the feds have been working cases like this for a while now.

 

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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.

“With scams, there tends to be some local focus, a focus in a certain city or state,” said John Risler, volunteer director of Northeast Florida’s Senior Medicare Patrol task force. “These are coming from all over the place.”

[..]

It is the latest in a string of scams targeting seniors during the coronavirus pandemic, advocates for seniors said. The Justice Department in April charged a Florida physician and marketer who it said illegally bought Medicare ID numbers and sent tests to seniors who did not request them. The scheme resulted in $8.4 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare, the Justice Department said.

The department, along with the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, is investigating other reports of coronavirus tests being sent to recipients who never ordered them, both said in separate statements.

The onslaught of unwanted tests is expected to wane. Medicare generally no longer covers an at-home Covid test unless a health provider orders it, after the Biden administration ended pandemic emergency measures on May 11.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has received calls from seniors about receiving test kits they didn’t order and is investigating instances of “potential abuse,” a spokesperson for the agency said. “The number of complaints represent a small portion of people with Medicare that have received these tests,” the spokesperson said. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/doj-probing-covid-test-fraud-including-kits-sent-to-dead-people

 

It's not always immediately noticeable to an individual that has Medicare if they have been/their plan has been charged for fraudulent devices. I immediately set to work tracing back months of Medicare billing to see if I could find the fraudulent charges. Not so, because a lot of EOBs and lists of charges are usually running several months behind. A call over to the OIG and federal Medicare fraud investigators, and they could see the charges from back in May, the exact timeframe when many of these packages started showing up over the US. They immediately flagged and created a case file, and unfortunately my relative's info has been compromised (the government is still investigating where and cannot comment yet) and they will have to issue them new cards/numbers. If you have any elderly relatives, or are a recipient of Medicare yourself be on the lookout for any unusual charges and or packages coming to your house. There are extensive news articles online addressing these instances from different states. I must stress in some cases many of these scams are using phishing or phone calls into tricking individuals into giving them their info - but this is a somewhat new tactic, the recipient of the fraudulent goods is unaware of anything coming to their home and never requested it.

Edited July 18, 2023 by yuna628

[TBoneTX 45,259]

Thank you for this crucial and priceless information, Y ma'am.

[yuna628 9,671]

Found more fraudulent charges to Medicare this week. They were backdated to last year. Another follow-up call to the OIG and I can tell you Medicare investigators are completely swamped with calls "is this about the test kit thing? we know.. we're so sorry". Another officer told me "it's exhausting". I provided what info I could, after doing more digging. This time it was four more LLCs, all registered to the same person. Addresses and phone numbers are bogus. One I could see has been doing this for some time, and is connected to another organization called the Center for Covid Control, which had hundreds of locations all running scams across the US, and got raided by the FBI.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/03/13/chicago-lab-indicted-covid-19-testing-scheme/11467937002/

 

At $200 per claim they are making, imagine the millions they are raking in. Still, I'd like to know what system was compromised. We know back in 2022 a contractor for CMS had their systems breached by crypto hackers, resulting in 254,000 Medicare recipient's info stolen. This seems like considerably more than that though.

 

 

[TBoneTX 45,259]

Good grief.  Y ma'am, have you involved (for example) your Congressman's office?

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,370]

13 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Good grief.  Y ma'am, have you involved (for example) your Congressman's office?

All my upvote bullets fired and done 

[yuna628 9,671]

23 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Good grief.  Y ma'am, have you involved (for example) your Congressman's office?

I'm not sure what a Congressman could do in this scenario. All relevant authorities know this is happening (FBI, DOJ, OIG, DHHS, and the states attorney) as well as AARP and investigative reporters, but it's alarming that they do not seem to know where such a mass amount of numbers were compromised from. I was two hours on hold last night waiting to speak to an investigator and I was told to not be surprised if I find more fraudulent charges and packages.

[Pooky 3,780]

38 minutes ago, yuna628 said:

I'm not sure what a Congressman could do in this scenario.

Tap the responsible party and ask for their cut of the swindle? 😒

[yuna628 9,671]

I wanted to give a little update to this old thread. I passed a good deal of information that I was able to dig up involving individuals in this case to the relevant authorities and to some alternative sources. I hope that it provided useful info that the feds could use against this specific criminal. I am pretty ticked off though that the FBI let this guy flee the country.... while they recovered some of the stolen taxpayer money, $1.5 million is a drop in a bucket.

 

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Now, 12 News Investigates has learned the Department of Justice and FBI are closing in on companies accused of ordering and sometimes shipping those test kits.

A federal warrant shows the DOJ and FBI have recovered a little more than $1.5 million from a bank account for the Chicago-based company SK Diagnostics Inc. The feds say, in a 9-week period between March and June, the company was paid $43,305,656 by Medicare and billed the government on behalf of roughly 465,000 people and 471 others who had died. Documents show the owner of SK Diagnostics bought a plane ticket to India and left Chicago the same day he was interviewed by the feds in June. https://www.wisn.com/article/feds-recover-dollar15-million-of-alleged-dollar43-million-covid-19-medicare-fraud-case/46253200

and this was another guy I tried looking into. The FBI's court filing is here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67594550/1/united-states-v-syed/

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A Schaumburg, Illinois, COVID-19 testing lab owner is now charged in federal court for scheming to defraud Medicare out of millions of dollars.

Baqar Hussain Razv Syed, the owner of Luna Labs, is charged with health care fraud in federal court in Chicago.

Federal court records show the scheme that 12 News Investigates has been reporting for months. Here's how it works, records show companies bill Medicare, using beneficiary's numbers for test kits people never wanted and usually never received. https://www.wisn.com/article/federal-charges-chicago-area-covid-19-testing-lab-made-millions-from-medicare/46108114

 

 

[TBoneTX 45,259]

Gracias for your continuous intrepid efforts, Y ma'am.