Brett Weiner and Valerie Desalvo have pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges for their role in buying and selling fake doctors’ orders used to obtain over $1.5 million in fraudulent payments from Medicare. According to US Attorney Buchanan, the charges and other information presented in court: Brett Weiner and Valerie Desalvo owned and operated Laboratory Marketing Services, LLC (“LMS”), a business in Boca Raton, Florida. LMS was in the business of, among other things, receiving kickback payments in exchange for patient “leads,” consisting of billable Medicare beneficiaries’ personal identifying information. Defendants Weiner and Desalvo received bribes from DME companies such as Medihealth Medical Solutions, LLC, located in Amory, Mississippi, and Liberty Medical DME, LLC, in Atlanta, Georgia, in exchange for the leads. These “leads” included, among other information, each Medicare beneficiary’s name, Medicare number, diagnoses, pain level, and primary care physician.
Through LMS, Weiner and Desalvo also bought and sold signed doctors’ orders from Nagaindra Srivastav and his company B2B Apps Solutions, LLC in Tampa, Florida, which they sold to DME companies. A substantial portion of the doctors’ orders that Weiner and Desalvo purchased from Srivastav and B2B contained forged signatures or purported approvals of physicians or other healthcare providers whose names and professional identifying information were used without their authorization or knowledge.
In total, Weiner and Desalvo, through LMS, caused the submission of more than $.15 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare, which generated approximately $715,000 in payments, for braces that were procured through the payment of illegal kickbacks and bribes and were ineligible for Medicare reimbursement. Brett Weiner, 61, of Atlanta, Georgia, and Valerie Desalvo, 58, of Boca Raton, Florida, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to pay healthcare kickbacks. Sentencing is scheduled for February 8, 2024, at 10:00 a.m.
