The owner of a now defunct Rhode Island-based chain of addiction treatment centers who, as described in court documents “embezzled and cheated his way through life,” has been sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison for defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and other health insurers out of millions of dollars. Michael Brier, 62, of Newton, MA, previously admitted to a federal judge that he and his company, Recovery Connections Centers of America, Inc. (RCCA), short changed patients suffering from substance abuse disorders in Rhode Island and Massachusetts by failing to provide them with required counseling sessions and treatment that were an important part of their care, while simultaneously billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare payors for those sessions. In many cases, RCCA routinely billed for 45-minute counseling sessions, while in fact providing sessions that were only 5–10 minutes or less in length.
