The second defendant in a scheme to defraud investors in the Orthodox Jewish community who invested in assisted living communities and nursing homes throughout the Midwest has settled his case with the Securities and Exchange Commission, agreeing to pay $2.25 million.
An Omaha, NE, man was sentenced to 46 months in prison for using the personal information of senior living residents in several states to defraud Medicare and state Medicaid agencies out of thousands of dollars through fraudulent claims, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a manual Tuesday specifically designed to help assisted living community and nursing home managers spot the signs of financial abuse and protect residents and the facilities.
In any given year, the FBI estimates that millions of U.S. older adults are defrauded to the tune of approximately $3 billion. Further, just one in 44 of those cases are ever reported, according to the National Adult Protective Services Association.
More than 68,000 adults over age 60 lost a total of more than $835 million in 2019 in internet scams, according to the FBI. The amount represents a substantial increase over the $649 million loss reported for 2018 and the $342 million reported for 2017.
Americans are tired of robocalls. And with stay-at-home orders around the country, more of us are encountering an unwanted robocall when we answer our phones, according to a survey by Provision Senior Living.
The Federal Trade Commission is telling consumers to report assisted living communities and nursing homes to the federal government and to state attorneys general if facilities wrongly say they are entitled to Medicaid beneficiaries’ federal stimulus payments from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
Charlotte Kay Reilly, has become the first person to be prosecuted by the North Dakota Medicaid Fraud Unit. She was charged with theft of prescription medication and reckless endangerment.
Efforts by state Medicaid Fraud Control Units resulted in a total of 23 criminal convictions and more than $2.2 million in criminal monetary recoveries related to assisted living in fiscal year 2019, according to an annual report released Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. One case is responsible for much of the dollar amount.
President Trump’s commutation of the 35-year prison sentence of a woman convicted of orchestrating a $205 million Medicare fraud scheme that involved assisted living facility owners and operators “may well encourage lawlessness in a federal program that can least afford it,” a former federal prosecutor says.
