A woman was arrested for her alleged role in a conspiracy to defraud Medicare by submitting false and fraudulent claims for cancer genetic testing as well as her role in conspiring to submit fraudulent claims related to COVID-19 and other tests. Reuters reports that the case is one of the first Medicare fraud cases in connection with billings for COVID-19.
As the COVID-19 crisis began to escalate, people have been willing to pay illegal kickbacks in exchange for completed COVID-19 and Respiratory Pathogen Panel (RPP) tests, which reimburse at a much higher rate than the COVID-19 tests. The complaint also alleges that the woman agreed with others to be paid kickbacks on a per-test basis for COVID-19 tests, provided that those tests were bundled with more expensive RPP tests. Read a story from Reuters. Read a Department of Justice press release.
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