A Georgia man will appear in court for his alleged role in a conspiracy to defraud federally funded and private healthcare benefit programs by submitting fraudulent testing claims for COVID-19 and genetic cancer screenings. Erik Santos, 49, of Braselton, Georgia, is charged by complaint with one count of conspiring to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute and one count of conspiring to commit healthcare fraud. He was arrested at his home today by special agents of the FBI and is scheduled to have his initial court appearance this afternoon in Atlanta federal court. According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, Santos ran a marketing company that generated leads to testing companies. From November 2019 through the present, Santos and others engaged in a large-scale scheme to defraud Medicare by soliciting and receiving kickback payments from companies involved in clinical and diagnostic testing in exchange for steering to those companies individuals eligible for testing that Medicare would reimburse. Santos agreed with others to be paid kickbacks on a per-test basis for submitting genetic cancer screening tests to diagnostic testing facilities, regardless of medical necessity. As the COVID-19 crisis began to escalate, Santos used the pandemic as an opportunity to expand his pre-existing kickback schemes and to capitalize on a national emergency for his own financial gain. Santos agreed with others to be paid kickbacks on a per-test basis for COVID-19 tests, provided that those tests were bundled with a much more expensive respiratory pathogen panel (RPP) test, which does not identify or treat COVID-19. Santos sought to maximize his kickback profits and to bleed federal healthcare resources at a time when Medicare beneficiaries across the United States were in dire need of coverage for medical treatment and services.
