I-Team: Major Medicare Fraud Bust Targets Miami Clinics
MIAMI (CBS4) - Radio scanners picked up FBI agents on the move early Tuesday morning from Miami Lakes to Hialeah to Doral.
Coordinated busts rounded up suspects and raided healthcare facilities throughout Miami-Dade beginning at dawn.
Agents with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General Office of Investigations also swept in on several locations, including Biscayne Milieu on Park Center Boulevard in Miami.
According to an indictment unsealed this afternoon in Federal Court in Miami where I-Team Investigator Stephen Stock was present, Biscayne Milieu and the 71 year-old psychiatrist there, doctor Gary Kushner, ran a scam that stole 55 million dollars from Medicare during the last four years.
Agents took out boxes of evidence. They also seized computers and other files.
At an initial appearance in Federal District Court in downtown Miami this afternoon, which lasted several hours, prosecutors alleged that therapists and Biscayne Milieu's clinical director and program director billed Medicare for therapy sessions where patients weren't even present.
Prosecutors even say they have the clinical director on videotape ordering therapists to falsify patient records to bill Medicare for millions in therapy that never occurred.
In all, 18 people were arrested today. Three more people who are named in an indictment are believed to have fled the country.
Sources say this is part of a huge two-day round-up of Medicare fraud suspects that will continue around the country into tomorrow.
