Tampa, FL – U.S. District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington has sentenced Ruth Bianca Fernandez (39, Pompano Beach) to three years in federal prison for her role in a conspiracy to commit health care fraud and for making a false statement in a matter involving a federal health care benefit program. As part of her sentence, the court ordered Fernandez to pay approximately $12 million to the affected government health programs and an insurance company, which obligation is joint and several with other coconspirators. The court also entered an order of forfeiture against Fernandez in the amount of $62,650. Fernandez had pleaded guilty on October 18, 2021.
According to court documents, beginning in January 2018 and continuing into April 2019, Patsy Truglia, previously sentenced to a 15-year term of imprisonment, Fernandez, who worked directly under Truglia’s supervision and direction, and other conspirators generated medically unnecessary physicians’ orders via their telemarketing operation for certain orthotic devices—knee braces, back braces, wrist braces, and other braces—referred to as durable medical equipment (“DME”). Through the telemarketing operation, federal health care program beneficiaries’ (i.e., Medicare beneficiaries’) personal and medical information was harvested to create the unnecessary DME brace orders. The brace orders were then forwarded to purported “telemedicine” vendors that, in exchange for a fee, paid illegal bribes to physicians to sign the orders,...
The legal representatives of Awerco Construction Limited have issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the Ministry of Health, demanding an immediate retraction and apology over a press release concerning th...