Health care fraud used to be a faceless crime - until now. Medicare and Medicaid scams cost taxpayers more than $60 billion a year, but the average bank holdup is likely to get more attention. Seeking the public's help to catch more than 170 fugitive fraudsters, the government has launched a new health care most-wanted list, with its own website.
Among those featured is Leonard Nwafor, convicted a couple of years ago in Los Angeles of billing Medicare more than $1 million for motorized wheelchairs that beneficiaries didn't need. One of those who got a wheelchair was a blind man who later testified he couldn't see to operate it.
Facing time in federal prison, Nwafor disappeared before his sentencing.
"We're looking for new ways to press the issue of catching fugitives," said Gerald Roy, deputy inspector general for investigations at the Health and Human Services Department. "If someone walks into a bank and steals $3,000 or $4,000, it would be all over the newspaper. These people manage to do it from a less high profile position, but they still have a tremendous impact."
Even though motorized wheelchairs can run from under $1,000 to $7,000 apiece, Nawfor's scam was on the low end when compared to others who made the most-wanted list.
Sisters Clara and Caridad Guilarte allegedly submitted $9 million to Medicare in false and fraudulent claims for pricey infusion drugs that were never provided to patients. They are accused of offering cash and other rewards for beneficiaries to visit their clinic in Dearborn, Mich., and sign forms that said they received services that they never got.
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