The feds have arrested two folks they are saying bilked authorities medical help and the nation’s opioid disaster for thousands and thousands via shoddy companies and fraudulent billing at their chain of dependancy remedy facilities in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
“The allegations set forth in this case represent one of the most brazen and egregious examples of health care fraud the FBI has seen here in Rhode Island in recent history, and make no mistake, it is not a victimless crime,” mentioned Joseph Bonavolonta, the particular agent in control of the Boston FBI workplace.
“Any time the integrity of our federal health care programs is undermined,” he added, “we all pay the price through the cost of higher insurance premiums, greater out-of-pocket expenses, and co-pays, and even reduced or lost benefits.”
Michael Brier, 60, of Newton, and Mi Ok Bruining, 62, of Warwick, R.I., had been arrested Tuesday and appeared in U.S. District Court in Providence on fees of well being care fraud. Brier was moreover charged within the grievance with aggravated identification theft, cash laundering and obstruction.
Brier, a former tax preparer, in line with an affidavit filed with the grievance, isn’t any stranger to federal fraud fees. He pleaded responsible in 2019 to underreporting greater than $1 million in earnings to the IRS from 2004 to 2009 and to legal contempt for violating a decide’s order to not put together taxes for others. He was sentenced to greater than two years in jail for that cost.
He’s listed because the registered agent for an entity often called Recovery Connections Centers of America, Inc., which operates areas underneath the “Recovery Connection” title all through Rhode Island and in Massachusetts, together with one in Boston’s Roslindale neighborhood at 4174 Washington St.
“At Recovery Connection we provide treatment to those suffering from Opioid Dependence with Medication and Counseling. The most important thing we want all of our clients to understand that many of us ‘have been there’ and that is why we will ALWAYS treat them with Compassion and Respect,” the group’s web site claims.
The firm’s enterprise mannequin, as described on its web site DrugHelp.com, is to supply “Medication Assisted Treatment” utilizing issues like Suboxone Vivitrol and accepts “ALL insurances regardless of if we even have a contract for them.”
But prosecutors declare that their acceptance of insurance coverage was a bit too broad and their offered companies a bit too slender.
Recovery Connection — operated by Brier and Bruining, who’s a at the moment licensed scientific social employee — purportedly billed Medicare, Medicaid and different well being care suppliers for counseling classes that weren’t truly offered.
Prosecutors allege that the companies billed for normal 45-minute counseling classes that in reality usually occurred in 10 minutes or much less and, prosecutors argue “so many counseling sessions were billed at this level that the total amount of time would be impossible for the available therapist to have provided in any 24 hour period.”
Brier can be alleged to have misrepresented or hid his legal convictions and even his position within the enterprise in authorities filings and that the enterprise. He’s additionally alleged to have represented himself as a medical practitioner — which he isn’t — and issued prescriptions utilizing the identities of precise docs with out their permission.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”