A federal jury on Monday, Oct. 24, 2022, convicted the founder and owner of Blue Line Express Taxi & Medical Transport, a Toledo-area ambulette transportation business, of three counts of healthcare fraud following a three-day trial. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Abdul Haji Faqi, 46, of Toledo, was found guilty of participating in a scheme that knowingly submitted and received reimbursement payments from Medicaid for ineligible claims. Faqi’s co-defendants pleaded guilty and were sentenced earlier this year for their part in the scheme.
Between 2009 and 2016, Faqi schemed with his co-defendants to transport and bill Medicaid for ambulette transportation services of Medicaid beneficiaries who did not require or use a wheelchair. Faqi and his co-defendants knew that Medicaid only provided ambulette reimbursement for recipients who did require the use of a wheelchair and were actually transported in a wheelchair. In addition, as part of the scheme to defraud, evidence presented during the trial showed that Faqi and his co-defendants billed Medicaid for wheelchair attendants without actually providing any attendants.
Furthermore, evidence showed that Faqi and his co-defendants billed Medicaid for trips with multiple riders as separate individual trips, thereby inflating their Medicaid billing. Faqi and his co-defendants also failed to obtain, and falsified, ambulette Certification of Medical Necessity (CMN) documents from Medicaid recipients that they transported. Faqi and the others knew and understood that Medicaid required a CMN for each recipient transported. In total, court documents state that Faqi and his co-defendants received over $800,000 in reimbursements from Medicaid to which they were not entitled.
