A California man who operated a durable medical equipment (DME) company has been charged for his alleged participation in a massive healthcare fraud scheme. The defendant is the 22nd charged in the Southern District of Georgia as part of an investigation that uncovered more than $410 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare, the largest fraud case in the history of the Southern District of Georgia. Scott M. Hirsch, the operator of JI Medical, Inc., a California company, is accused of conspiring to pay kickbacks in exchange for obtaining orders for DME that JI Medical, Inc. would then bill to Medicare. Those Medicare beneficiaries were located in the Southern District of Georgia and elsewhere. As part of this scheme, the physicians receiving the kickbacks from JI Medical, Inc. knowingly signed false medical records describing “consultations” of Medicare patients. The operator of JI Medical, Inc. was charged by way of an Information, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. The healthcare fraud scheme charged is the largest in the history of the Southern District of Georgia. Previous charges in this string of cases include eight physicians, two nurse practitioners, two operators of telemedicine companies, and two brokers of patient data. The Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries whose identities were used as part of the scheme are located throughout the Southern District of Georgia, including the Augusta, Brunswick, Dublin, Savannah, Statesboro, and Waycross Divisions, as well as elsewhere in the United States.
