A doctor in Texas was convicted this week of defrauding Tricare in a scheme that involved luring patients into taking unnecessary medical tests in exchange for gift cards.
Sekhar Rao, 51, who was the medical director of an outpatient toxicology testing facility called ADAR Group LLC, was convicted by a federal jury of two counts of health care fraud, the Justice Department said in a news release Tuesday.
Rao and others charged in the scheme were accused of filing roughly $36 million in false and fraudulent claims to Tricare between May 2014 and June 2016, according to the indictment against them.
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He was found not guilty on a third charge of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, according to court documents.
Rao is scheduled to be sentenced in March and faces a maximum 20 years in prison, according to the news release.
The owner and operator of ADAR Group, who were sentenced for their roles in the scheme in 2018, ran the facility "solely to achieve the objective of their scheme to defraud: to unlawfully enrich themselves by submitting false and fraudulent claims for health care benefits," the Justice Department said in Rao's indictment.
Rao specifically was accused of authorizing toxicology and genetic testing, including cancer genetic testing, for Tricare beneficiaries without seeing, speaking to or otherwise treating patients, and without incorporating the test results into ongoing...
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