FROM: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
RELEASE Friday, January 17, 2014
Miami Patient Recruiter Pleads Guilty for Role in $190 Million Medicare Fraud Scheme
A patient recruiter for a fraudulent Miami-area mental health company, American Therapeutic Corporation (ATC), pleaded guilty today for her participation in a $190 million Medicare fraud scheme.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer of the Southern District of Florida, Special Agent in Charge Michael B. Steinbach of the FBI’s Miami Field Office and Special Agent in Charge Christopher B. Dennis of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) Office of Investigations Miami Office made the announcement.
Miami resident Mayelin Santoyo, 28, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore in the Southern District of Florida to one count of conspiracy to receive health care kickbacks. Sentencing has been scheduled for March 28, 2014. On Nov. 25, 2013, co-defendant Jose Martin Olivares, 36, also a Miami resident and patient recruiter, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to receive health care kickbacks before U.S. District Judge Donald L. Graham for his role in this scheme. Olivares’s sentencing is set for Feb. 4, 2014.
According to court documents, Santoyo was a patient recruiter for the now-defunct ATC. ATC and its management company, Medlink Professional Management Group Inc., were Florida corporations headquartered in Miami. ATC operated purported partial hospitalization programs (PHPs), a form of intensive treatment for severe mental illness, in seven different locations throughout South Florida and Orlando.
Santoyo recruited Medicare beneficiaries to attend ATC’s PHP program in exchange for kickbacks in the form of checks and cash. The amounts of the kickbacks were based on the number of days each recruited patient spent at ATC. Santoyo knew that the patients she recruited for ATC were not qualified to receive PHP treatment.
ATC’s owners and operators paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to the owners and operators of various assisted living facilities and halfway houses, as well as to patient recruiters, like Santoyo, in exchange for delivering ineligible patients to ATC. According to court documents, to obtain the cash required to support the kickbacks to recruiters such as Santoyo, the co-conspirators laundered millions of dollars of payments from Medicare.
In related cases, ATC, Medlink and various owners, managers, doctors, therapists and patient recruiters of ATC and Medlink have already pleaded guilty or have been convicted at trial. In September 2011, ATC’s owner, Lawrence Duran, was sentenced to 50 years in prison for his role in orchestrating and executing the scheme to defraud Medicare.
This case was investigated by the FBI and HHS-OIG and was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, under the supervision of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. The case was prosecuted by Assistant Chief Robert A. Zink and Trial Attorney Anne P. McNamara of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section.
Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, now operating in nine cities across the country, has charged more than 1,700 defendants who have collectively billed the Medicare program for more than $5.5 billion. In addition, HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with HHS-OIG, are taking steps to increase accountability and decrease the presence of fraudulent providers.
