Over the past 10 months, the Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against 10 defendants — four of whom were taken into custody December 16 — for kickback schemes at substance abuse treatment facilities in Orange County. The defendants in these cases charged as a result of The Sober Homes Initiative are substance abuse facility owners and patient recruiters who allegedly, among other things, provided kickback payments for the referral of patients to substance abuse treatment facilities, recovery homes or laboratories. These facility owners allegedly assigned a value to patients depending on the type of insurance the patients had, and then paid patient recruiters kickbacks for each patient the recruiters referred to their addiction treatment facilities. The recruiters allegedly received recurring payments for each month the patients continued to receive purported services from the facilities.
