Florida Surgeon Who Saved Rapper 50 Cent’s Life Is Sentenced to Seven Years Imprisonment for Fraudulent Insurance Billing

In 2000, a Florida doctor, Moses deGraft-Johnson, was one of the surgeons who operated on 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson III) after he sustained multiple gunshot wounds in Tallahassee, Florida. DeGraft-Johnson had owned and operated the Heart and Vascular Institute of North Florida, which was a doctor’s office and an outpatient catheterization laboratory in Tallahassee.

According to prosecutors, from early 2016 through February 2020, deGraft-Johnson submitted inflated billing codes to insurance providers, including Medicare and Florida Medicaid. DeGraft-Johnson replaced billing codes for diagnostic angiographies with billing codes for more expensive balloon angioplasties or atherectomies. According to the indictment, deGraft-Johnson also billed insurance providers when no catheterization had taken place and for procedures when he was out of the country.

In December 2020, deGraft-Johnson pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, fifty-six counts of health care fraud, and one count of aggravated identity theft. DeGraft-Johnson’s co-defendant pled guilty to one count of attempted conspiracy to commit mail fraud. DeGraft-Johnson has been ordered to pay over $28.4 million in restitution and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Read the indictment here.

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