A Nevada federal jury has found a doctor conducting illegal practice and $2 million in Medicare fraud guilty.
The conviction was handed down to Eduardo Abellana, M.D., 75, of Las Vegas. The doctor was found guilty of flooding a Detroit pharmacy, City Drugs, with unnecessary prescriptions in the millions.
A doctor sees jail time for million-dollar fraud.
Abellana was found to have green-lit the prescriptions without ever knowing or seeing the patients. The owners of the City Drugs pharmacy had been giving the dodgy doctor a litany of lucrative kickbacks to keep the fraud cycle going. Until the Justice Department stepped in to formally halt the malpractice.
Medicaid and Medicare fraud is a serious crime. Abellana has now been hit with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, receipt of illegal kickbacks, and defrauding the United States government.
The doctor is set to be sentenced on September 25, 2024. His custodial sentence could be more than twenty years in prison. This includes ten years for his part in the conspiracy to commit the fraud and five years for each count of kickbacks and defrauding the U.S. government.
The FBI Detroit Field Office and HHS-OIG investigated the criminal activity, and the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section led the prosecution.
Trial Attorneys Claire Sobczak and Kelly M. Warner oversaw the court hearing on behalf of the Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program. The program comprises nine strike forces in 27 federal districts.
The Health Care Fraud Stike Program has charged more than 5,400 defendants who raised $27 billion in illegal bills to federal health care programs and private insurers.
Abellana isn’t the only target the Justice Department has cracked down on this month. We reported that a Manhattan court found a man guilty of running a dark web drugs bazaar to the tune of $100 million in fraud.
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