Former NFL Player Convicted In $200M Medicare Fraud Scheme
Former NFL player Joel Rufus French has been convicted of a nearly $200 million Medicare fraud.
After a very short stint with the Green Bay Packers, he went into marketing, eventually launching his own company where he raked in cash by selling patient information and faking doctors’ orders for orthotic braces.
In a press release, the Justice Department calls French’s actions “egregious,” saying he “targeted seniors suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia and billed Medicare for orthotic braces for deceased patients and amputees.”
Court documents reveal that the 47-year-old collaborated with call centers overseas to pressure the elderly to give him their health insurance information so he could send them unneeded medical supplies.
The call center even “altered call recordings to make it seem like Medicare patients agreed to the braces when they did not.”
In doing so, French would pay these fake telemedicine companies to get doctors and other medical professionals to sign off on patient orders they sometimes didn’t know. Those orders would be sold to supply companies, which would then submit them to Medicare for reimbursement.
He was also convicted of defrauding CHAMPVA, which is the healthcare program for the immediate families of disabled vets. The trial evidence proved that he caused Medicare to bill braces for “amputees for limbs they did not have and for deceased beneficiaries.”
To pay off his co-conspirators who sold him patients’ personal information, at one point, he took $225,000 out of a Mississippi bank and drove it to them in Orlando.
“These schemes undermine the integrity of our healthcare system by robbing taxpayer-funded programs meant for legitimate medical care,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said. “Today’s verdict sends a clear message: the Criminal Division will aggressively prosecute those who prey on our nation’s seniors and veterans to steal from Medicare.”
His final charges include conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to offer, pay, solicit, and receive kickbacks. He’s facing up to 20 years in jail.
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