A California woman pleaded guilty to fraudulently submitting claims to governmental and private insurance programs during the COVID-19 pandemic for expensive and medically unnecessary respiratory pathogen panel (RPP) tests. According to court documents, from June 2020 to April 2022, Lourdes Navarro, 64, of Glendale, conspired with Imran Shams to obtain nasal swab specimens from residents and staff at nursing homes, assisted living facilities, rehabilitation facilities, and students and staff at primary and secondary schools, for the purported purpose of conducting screening tests to identify and isolate individuals infected with COVID-19. Obtaining those samples enabled Matias Clinical Laboratory, dba Health Care Providers Laboratory (HCPL), to perform RPP tests on some of the specimens, even though only COVID-19 testing had been ordered and even though there was no medical justification for conducting RPP tests. Navarro and Shams submitted, through HCPL, approximately $359 million in claims for the unnecessary RPP tests to Medicare, the Health Resources and Services Administration COVID-19 Uninsured Program, and a private health insurance company, and were reimbursed approximately $54 million.
