Matthew Taylor Witkowski, 38, was sentenced to 60 months in prison for conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud by fraudulently trafficking in orders for durable medical equipment such as back, knee, and elbow braces. From at least August 2019 through the date of his arrest in July 2022, Witkowski and his co-defendant, Christopher Margait, engaged in a scheme to defraud Medicare by illegally obtaining and selling fraudulent written orders for goods and services paid for by Medicare, particularly including for durable medical equipment (“DME”). Using a business that he jointly owned and operated with Margait, and a call center that Witkowski owned and operated in the Dominican Republic, Witkowski illegally generated and purchased fraudulent written orders for DME and then sold those fraudulent orders to pharmacies and DME suppliers, including suppliers in New York City. Those pharmacies and DME suppliers then used those fraudulent orders as the basis for more than $8 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare. Many of these fraudulent orders used names and personal health information of actual Medicare beneficiaries, without the beneficiaries’ authorization or prior knowledge. Many of these fraudulent orders also contained professional information of doctors and other healthcare providers enrolled in the Medicare program, as well as the purported electronic signatures of these providers, which were falsified and created without the authorization or knowledge of these providers.
During the course of the scheme, Witkowski and Margait received more than $4 million in illegal kickbacks from DME suppliers, who made these payments to True Prospects Marketing, Inc., a company controlled by Witkowski and Margait, and to Sales Drive Marketing LLC, a company owned and controlled by Witkowski. Witkowski, a US citizen who resided in the Dominican Republic, pleaded guilty on January 19, 2023, to a single count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. In addition to the prison sentence, Witkowski was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay forfeiture of $4,065,995 and restitution of $8,131,990 to the Medicare program.
