A federal jury in Nashville has convicted Doctor Benjamin T. Toh, 68, of Chicago, Illinois, for his role in a more than $9.5 million healthcare fraud conspiracy. He was convicted of conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Kickback Statute after a two-week trial. According to the evidence at trial, the defendant, who was enrolled as a Medicare provider and licensed to practice medicine in multiple states, worked with purported telemedicine companies to obtain access to Medicare and Medicaid patients around the country. From March 2019 through September 2019, he and others caused the submission of more than $9.5 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid for cancer genetic tests. The defendant ordered thousands of these tests despite never actually meeting the patients in person or via telemedicine and never reviewing test results.
In exchange for providing signed orders for genetic testing, the defendant was paid kickbacks by co-conspirator telemedicine companies. These companies were, in turn, paid by co-conspirator marketing companies that targeted Medicare and Medicaid patients through door-to-door marketing, at senior fairs, at nursing homes, and at other locations, and convinced patients to provide their genetic material via a mouth swab kit. The marketers then provided the swab kits to a lab in Spring Hill, Tennessee, for laboratory cancer genetic testing and in exchange for kickbacks paid to them by the lab. The lab billed Medicare and Medicaid for the tests.
