Two Florida medical professionals have been convicted of various crimes by a federal jury after defrauding the government’s Medicare system of tens of millions of dollars.
Dean Zassmer, 54, a Chiropractor in Miami, is accused of health care fraud, health care fraud, conspiracy to make illegal health care rebate payments, illegal health care rebate payments, and making false statements about health care issues. was convicted of
Lawrence Alexander, 45, an orthopedic surgeon also from Miami, was found guilty of making false statements about health care.
According to the Department of Justice (DoJ), Zusmer owns one of four durable medical equipment (DME) companies that have charged Medicare $31 million in unnecessary DME, about half of which was paid by the scheme. was broken.
Alexander owned another DME firm with a third doctor, Jeremy Waxman, but allegedly hid his involvement in the fraud by naming the firm in his family’s name.
The co-conspirators then paid kickbacks to marketers who used overseas call centers to recruit patients, and bribed telemedicine companies to extract prescriptions for braces patients didn’t need, the DoJ said. rice field.
Alexander and Zusmer are due to be sentenced on April 20th and could face lengthy prison sentences. Alexander could get up to 5 years, and Zussumer up to 40 years. Waxman has already been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The case was investigated by the FBI and the Inspector General’s Medicare Fraud Office. According to the DoJ, since March 2007, investigators operating in 15 strike units in 24 federal districts have indicted more than 4,200 defendants who fraudulently claimed more than $19 billion from Medicare. Did.
Medicare remains a popular target for scammers looking to exploit America’s labyrinthine healthcare system. In October 2022, an Illinois couple was jailed for several years after carrying out a fraud scheme that earned her $7 million over nearly a decade.
In that case, they paid the marketer a kickback in exchange for a patient referral to a home health care company.
