Robert Lake, age 62, a resident of East Rockaway, New York, was arrested in the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, after disembarking from an international flight, after being previously indicted for federal healthcare fraud. According to the indictment, Lake was a licensed prosthetist and orthotist who operated his own durable medical equipment (DME) supply companies, Triseto and Ortho Works. From 2017 to around July 2019, Lake purchased doctors’ orders for medically unnecessary orthotic braces and submitted claims to Medicare. After Medicare revoked Triseto’s enrollment in the program in July 2019, Lake shifted to selling doctors’ orders through his marketing company, Cranial Scientific, in exchange for kickbacks. The doctors’ orders were medically unnecessary and, at times, manipulated at Lake’s direction.
Lake is charged with conspiring with others, including Houma resident, Patrick Haydel. Haydel had previously pled guilty to his role in this same fraudulent scheme. Haydel and Lake later learned that several physicians complained that they never signed the orders sold by Lake, and further that Medicare beneficiaries and their caregivers, complained they neither requested nor needed the DME they received. After the government executed a search warrant on Haydel’s business, Lake transferred over $2 million to a Philippine account. In total, Lake and Haydel submitted more than $17 million in fraudulent DME claims to Medicare, for which Medicare reimbursed them more than $8 million.
