News

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged a group of five physicians with insider trading in the stock of a medical professional liability insurer. According to the SEC allegations, Dr. Apparao Mukkamala received confidential information that American Physicians Capital Inc. (ACAP) was going to be acquired by another insurance company. Dr. Mukkamala then shared that...

Olivia Z. Cardenas, a former employee of the Texas Medicaid system, has been sentenced along with three others for participating in a Medicaid fraud scheme that cost taxpayers over $200,000. Ms. Cardenas received the longest sentence: she is to serve 15 months in prison and to pay $53,800 in restitution. According to the San Antonio Express-News, authorities allege that Ms. Cardenas was the...

Ms. Judi Ann Papagni, a tax preparer from Bakersfield, California, faces a 21-count indictment for presenting 54 fraudulent tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service. Ms. Papagni allegedly inflated the reported income in the individual tax returns so that the tax payers would receive undeserved Earned Income Credit payments.

While each tax return claimed a relatively modest refund,...

A total of 48 people have been charged with participating in a widespread prescription drug Medicaid fraud scheme. The fraud created a circuit, so that patients obtained expensive prescription drugs paid for by Medicaid, some costing as much as $1,600 per bottle. They then sold those drugs to sidewalk collectors, who in turn sold them to prescription drug wholesalers. Finally, the medications...

Tax fraud doesn’t just send people to prison; tax fraud may also be going on while they’re there. Michael Joseph, resident of the Apalachee Correctional Institution in Sneads, Florida, has been busy in prison. According to the Justice Department, Mr. Joseph filed 84 fraudulent tax returns claiming a total of $179,349.

WCTV reports that Mr. Joseph used other inmates’...

Medicaid and Medicare fraud is a serious drain on public funds, and it can also threaten patient safety. A whistleblower was motivated by concern for patient safety when she reported to authorities last year that her employer and a local doctor were filing false claims with the Medicare program. Dr. Jacques Roy, owner of Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, masterminded a $375 million...

Republican political contributor Sheldon Adelson is under scrutiny for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Mr. Adelson paid Leonel Alberto Alves, a lawyer in Macau, to represent the interests of Sands China Limited in the gambling capital. Sands China Limited is Mr. Adelson’s Macau-based operation of Las Vegas Sands.

The attorney to whom Mr. Adelson...

Tariq Mahmud, owner of Detroit-area Comprehensive Rehabilitation Services Inc. (CRS), has been sentenced to seven years in prison for leading a $3 million Medicare fraud scheme, according to the Justice Department. Mr. Mahmud will also serve three years’ supervised release and, jointly and severally with his co-defendants, must pay restitution of $1.8 million.

On February 2,...

In January 2012, Maersk Line Limited settled a False Claims Act case with the U.S. government, agreeing to pay $31.9 million to resolve allegations that the company knowingly overcharged the Department of Defense for the transport of thousands of containers for use in the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The False Claims Act suit was initially filed in San Francisco by a former...