TAMPA (970 WFLA) -- 13 people from the Tampa Bay area are among more than 600 busted nationwide in a federal crackdown on healthcare fraud.
The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney's office in Tampa say seven of the defendants are facing charges in connection with unlawful prescribing and distribution of opioids and other dangerous narcotics. Others are accused of defrauding federal healthcare programs, including Medicare and the military program TRICARE.
Below is a list of those charged and the accusations against them, furnished by the Middle District of Florida U.S. Attorney's Office.
Dr. Charles Gerardi has been charged with conspiracy, health care fraud, and obstruction of a federal audit. Gerardi is a licensed psychologist who was formerly associated with a group practice known as Geriatric Psychological Specialists (GPS). According to court documents, GPS contracted with nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to provide psychological services to residents. For years, Gerardi impermissibly billed Medicare for providing medically unnecessary psychotherapy to Medicare beneficiaries who suffered from severe dementia and, at times, he billed for psychotherapy when he was actually performing medication management, a non-covered service when performed by a psychologist. First Coast initiated an audit of Gerardi’s practices in 2012. Gerardi tried to obstruct the audit by creating phony patient records and providing those records to the auditor. Finally, when First Coast placed Gerardi on prepayment review for the 20-minute billing code he had used for years, Gerardi changed his submitted billing code to reflect 45-minute sessions but continued to provide patients only 20-minute sessions.
Dr. Zachary Bird was charged in a six-count indictment with distributing and dispensing controlled substances not for a legitimate medical purpose and outside the usual course of professional practice. Bird is an anesthesiologist that operated a pain management clinic called Physicians Wellness and Pain Specialists (PWPS) in Tampa. According to court documents, this clinic functioned as a “pill mill” where Bird prescribed large quantities of opiates to his patients. Specifically, from January 2015 to the end of May 2018, Bird prescribed approximately 5.2 million tablets of hydrocodone, methadone, morphine, and oxycodone at PWPS. Bird was arrested on June 25, 2018.
Dr. Jeffrey Abraham has pleaded guilty to a one-count information charging him with distribution of controlled substances not specified by his DEA registration. Abraham was previously employed at two local Veterans Affairs hospitals in the Tampa-area. As a VA physician, he was authorized by the DEA to write prescriptions for controlled substances only as part of official federal duties. According to the plea agreement, Abraham resigned from the VA to work at a pain management clinic in Tampa. His official federal duty registration was not transferable, and Abraham did not obtain a new DEA registration to write controlled substance prescriptions to the patients he saw while employed at the clinic. From August 2017 to March 2018, while at the clinic, Abraham wrote over 2,000 prescriptions for controlled substances, including more than 600 prescriptions for hydromorphone and over 1,000 prescriptions for oxycodone. On March 8, 2018, Abraham admitted to federal agents that he knew his official federal duty DEA registration number could not be used at the clinic, and agreed to surrender his DEA registration.
Alcira Mercedes Wells and her former husband, Edward Leonard Wells, Jr., have been charged with conspiracy, healthcare fraud, and aggravated identity theft. According to the indictment, between May 2014 and February 2015, Centurion Compounding, Inc., a marketing firm that was located in Florida, employed representatives to market compounded medications for conditions like pain and scars to beneficiaries of health care benefit programs, especially TRICARE. Lifecare and Oldsmar Pharmacies billed the beneficiaries’ health care benefit plans for these creams, which ranged in price from approximately $900 to $21,000 for a one-month supply. Lifecare and Oldsmar, at various times, paid Centurion a portion, approximately 50%, of each claim paid by the health care benefit programs, minus expenses, for each prescription. Centurion, in turn, paid its marketing representatives a percentage of each paid claim, which ranged from 15-30% of the total claim amount after expenses. From September 2014 to February 2015, Alcira Wells was a Connecticut-based Centurion marketing representative married to Edward L. Wells, Jr., who was in the Army stationed at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina. Alcira Wells obtained from her mother-in-law, a nurse at a Navy hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, signed prescription forms prescribing Centurion-marketed compounded creams to Edward Wells and his brother. These prescriptions featured Alcira Wells’s Centurion rep number and the signature of a physician in Jacksonville. After receiving these signed prescription forms, Alcira Wells, with Edward Wells’s knowledge and consent, photocopied or otherwise duplicated them. The Wellses then submitted numerous fraudulent prescriptions for Centurion-marketed compounded medications for U.S. Army personnel stationed at Ft. Bragg and others living in Connecticut, which prescriptions the Jacksonville-based physician never wrote, authorized, or knew about. Edward Wells handed out Centurion prescription forms to personnel stationed with him in North Carolina, most of whom were subordinate in rank, and paid and offered to pay these TRICARE beneficiaries to obtain the compounded creams. After the soldiers filled out or provided their identifiers, Edward transmitted the beneficiaries’ information to Alcira Wells in Connecticut; she then transferred it onto forms with the doctor’s duplicated signature. Alcira Wells submitted these prescriptions first to Centurion and then to Lifecare or Oldsmar Pharmacy for filling, and all were billed to TRICARE. Centurion paid and promised to pay Alcira Wells and those working with her commissions for each filled prescription. The total claimed amount or intended loss was at least $1,246,787.00 and the total amount paid by TRICARE was $1,061,137.16.
Dion Gregory Fisher and Samuel Blaine Huffman have been charged with conspiracy to possess with the intent to manufacture and distribute, and possession with the intent to distribute, counterfeit oxycodone pills made with fentanyl and a fentanyl analogue. Fisher is also charged with multiple counts of distributing the counterfeit oxycodone pills and engaging in money laundering-illegal monetary transactions using proceeds of the drug crimes.
Phillip Morose has been charged with conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute and to distribute counterfeit oxycodone pills made with fentanyl and a fentanyl analogue.
Christopher McKinney has agreed to plead guilty to conspiring with Fisher, Morose and others to manufacture and distribute counterfeit oxycodone pills made with fentanyl and a fentanyl analogue. According to the plea agreement, Fisher and McKinney manufactured and sold counterfeit oxycodone pills. Fisher supplied the fentanyl and pill processing materials, and pressed the powder fentanyl into counterfeit oxycodone pills with the help of Huffman. McKinney sold the pills to Morose, using the U.S. Mail to exchange packages of pills and currency. His change of plea hearing is set for July 2, 2018.
Konrad Guzewicz has entered pleas of guilty to four counts of money laundering. According to the plea agreement, Guzewicz engaged in illegal monetary transactions involving proceeds of the drug crimes with which Fisher has been charged. Guzewicz admitted that Fisher recruited him to launder large sums of cash generated by the distribution of counterfeit oxycodone pills made with fentanyl and other controlled substances or analogues, and he personally participated in the laundering of at least $120,000 in drug proceeds for Fisher.
Caridad Limberg-Gonzalez and Dr. Thomas Carpenter have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, four counts of health care fraud and three counts of making false statements in connection with heath care matters. According to the indictment, Limberg-Gonzalez owned Foundational Health, a Tampa-area clinic, and Carpenter was the medical director there. Between May 2011 and October 2016, Limberg-Gonzalez caused Foundational Health to submit $1.8 million in claims to Part B of the Medicare program listing Carpenter as the rendering physician. In truth, the services were provided by nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and medical doctors who were not enrolled in the Medicare program, all without any supervision by Carpenter. In addition, Limberg-Gonzalez gave Carpenter plans of care and face-to-face encounter forms authorizing home health services to sign. Carpenter signed the documents, even though he never saw or cared for the patients identified in those documents. According to the indictment, Accurate Home Health, a Tampa-area home health agency, relied on the documents that Carpenter signed to submit approximately $762,000 in claims to Part A of the Medicare program.
Roselle Fitzgerald has been charged with one count of theft of government funds, two counts of false statement to a federal agency, seven counts of counterfeit or forged securities, and three counts of fraudulent use of a means of identification. According to the indictment, Fitzgerald worked as a title closer at various law firms while simultaneously obtaining Social Security Disability Insurance and Medicare benefits to which she was not entitled. She also made material false statements to employees of the Social Security Administration regarding her work activity. In addition, Fitzgerald possessed counterfeit or forged checks from the law firms at which she was employed and used the means of identification of others in connection with the counterfeit or forged checks. The indictment also notifies Fitzgerald that the United States is seeking a money judgement in the amount of $192,091.20, the proceeds of theft of government funds and the counterfeit or forged securities.
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