A resident of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Daniel Hurt, 59, was sentenced in federal court to 120 months of imprisonment, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay more than $97 million in restitution and to forfeit more than $30 million and the proceeds from the sale of a yacht for conspiring to commit healthcare fraud and conspiring to pay and receive unlawful kickbacks. According to information presented to the Court, Hurt engaged in three separate healthcare fraud and illegal kickback schemes. First, he and his co-conspirators victimized both TRICARE—a program that provides civilian healthcare benefits for military personnel, military retirees, and military dependents—and CHAMPVA—a healthcare benefit program run by the Department of Veterans Affairs—through a scheme that involved the payment of illegal kickbacks. In all, that scheme caused a loss to TRICARE of more than $18 million and to CHAMPVA of more than $450,000.
Second, Hurt engaged in a scheme that involved the payment of illegal kickbacks related to cancer genomic (CGx) testing, which was billed as if the testing were done in the Western District of Pennsylvania. In all, Medicare suffered a loss of more than $25 million from that scheme. CGx testing uses DNA sequencing to detect mutations in genes that could indicate a higher risk of developing certain types of cancers in the future. Hurt’s third scheme involved illegal kickback payments and cancer genomic testing that caused an additional loss to Medicare of at least $53.3 million.
