WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department has charged dozens of individuals in a number of well being care fraud and prescription drug schemes, together with one totaling $1.9 billion and a physician accused of ordering faux ankle braces for a affected person whose leg had been amputated, officers stated Wednesday.

The scheme involving the submission of practically $2 billion in bogus claims is without doubt one of the largest well being care fraud instances ever introduced by the Justice Department, the company stated. It’s one in all a number of introduced as a part of a crackdown in states across the nation.

In complete, 78 folks in 16 states had been charged in a sequence of separate instances, which additionally included an alleged scheme to purchase again HIV treatment from sufferers after which resell the tablets.

The defendants focused weak folks and used the cash they made to purchase unique automobiles, jewellery and yachts, federal investigators stated. The federal authorities seized tens of millions of {dollars} in money, cars and actual property as a part of the crackdown.

“The Justice Department will find and bring to justice criminals who seek to defraud Americans and steal from taxpayer-funded programs,” Attorney General Merrick Garland stated in a press release.

In one case filed within the Southern District of Florida, investigators stated they discovered practically $2 billion in fraudulent telemedicine claims submitted to government-funded protection applications like Medicare and Medicaid, which primarily cowl folks age 65 and over and people with low incomes, respectively. No attorneys had been listed Wednesday for the three males charged in reference to the net platform DMERx, and a message left with a father or mother firm was not instantly returned.

Those instances concerned templates for faux physician orders for braces and ache lotions that had been utilized in trade for kickbacks and bribes, investigators stated.

In one other telemedicine fraud case, prosecutors say a Washington state physician, David Antonio Becerril, signed greater than 2,800 fraudulent orders, together with ankle braces for a affected person whose leg had been amputated years earlier than. He’s accused of taking lower than 40 seconds to evaluation and signal every order. One of his attorneys, William Portanova, declined to remark.

In some instances, laptop software program produced faux physician’s orders and sufferers had been by no means examined or had solely a short dialog with the doctor, stated Omar Perez Aybar, particular agent accountable for the Miami regional workplace for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector basic.

“There were providers and patients all across the country,” he stated.

In one other case, a Brooklyn man is accused of working with different folks to purchase greater than $150 million in prescribed drugs, together with HIV medicines from suppliers who purchased again treatment from sufferers. Steven Diamantstein is accused of re-labeling the medicine on the market. His protection lawyer, Zach Intrater, stated Diamantstein has pleaded not responsible to the costs and ”seems ahead to contesting them in court docket.”

The investigation concerned coordination amongst a number of companies, together with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and state Medicaid fraud items, Perez Aybar stated.

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