In the 2021 Year in Review, we reported on Attorney General Merrick Garland's May 2021 announcement of the creation of an interagency COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force and we also detailed two major takedowns executed by this Task Force in May and September 2021. In addition, we covered a number of the substantive areas toward which federal enforcement authorities had turned their focus in 2021, including fraud against the Provider Relief Fund and fraud related to the provision of COVID-19 related health care services, among others.
Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced another significant takedown that it described as “build[ing] on the success of the May 2021 COVID-19 Enforcement Action.” As part of this enforcement effort, criminal charges were announced against 21 defendants across the country for their alleged involvement in various COVID-19 related fraud schemes that resulted in over $149 million in “COVID-19 related false billings to federal programs and theft from federally-funded pandemic assistance programs.”
Generally speaking, the alleged schemes at issue in this takedown were very similar to the enforcement actions that we reported on in our 2021 Year in Review:
Misuse of patient information and specimens received through COVID-19 testing to submit false claims to Medicare for unrelated, medically unnecessary, and far more expensive services – or for services that were never actually provided.
Exploitation of telehealth policies that...
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