Seventeenth Defendant Sentenced in $15 Million Medicare Fraud Scheme Targeting Elderly, Mentally Ill

On May 24, 2010, an Irvine physician, Xinming Fu, was sentenced for his role in a scheme which bilked Medicare out of $15 million in unnecessary respiratory treatments which were not performed in accordance with the Medicare rules or not performed at all.  Dr. Fu, who was sentenced to thirty (30) months in federal prison, was the 17th and final defendant convicted in relation to this health care fraud scheme.

In this scheme, which took place between 2000 and 2006, the owner of a respiratory treatment program and doctors paid illegal kickbacks to marketers who, in turn, paid kickbacks to owners and administrators of “board-and-care” facilities.  These treatments were violative of federal law as they were conducted on a daily or almost daily basis without any physician supervision.  The respiratory treatments also illegal because Medicare requires that the treatments are performed at a doctor’s office or in a mobile medical unit, not a “board-and-care” facility.  Dr. Fu’s sentencing concludes six years of litigation on this particular matter.

More information can be found at:  http://losangeles.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel10/la052610.htm