Miami couple faces lengthy sentence for Medicare fraud

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Tuesday, 09.13.11
Miami couple faces lengthy sentence for Medicare fraud

A Miami couple who owned a South Florida chain of mental health clinics face spending the rest of their lives in prison for ripping off millions from Medicare.

BY JAY WEAVER
[e-mail]

Lawrence Duran was a Miami healthcare executive who regularly lobbied Congress in favor of legislation to boost government subsidies for his industry: community mental health centers. He visited with U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Washington to drum up support. He, his girlfriend and other members of his lobbying organization threw a fundraiser for another Miami congressman, Rep. Kendrick Meek, when he ran for the U.S. Senate.

But Justice Department officials paint a far more sinister portrait of Duran and his girlfriend, Marianella Valera. They say the lobbying work was all a front to help them steal more money from the taxpayer-funded Medicare program.

Now Duran and Valera, who each pleaded guilty this year to Medicare fraud charges of running the biggest mental-health racket in the nation, face the prospect of spending the rest of their lives in prison for orchestrating the $205 million scam.

If U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King sides with prosecutors at a sentencing hearing Wednesday, Duran, 49, and Valera, 40, could be imprisoned for 50 and 40 years, respectively. Those sentences would be the longest prison terms ever for Medicare fraud offenders in the country, surpassing 30 years given to a convicted Miami doctor for her role in an $11 million HIV-therapy scheme.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/13/2405602/miami-couple-faces-lengthy-sentence.html

[geomon666]

1. Adios

One by one we need to scrape these corrupt monsters from our lives.

[Angry Dragon]

2. and the people of Florida elect a governor that stole billions

[onethatcares]

3. your line should read, "Stole billions from Medicare"

but on a brighter note, pricksnot has started wearing open collar shirts to change his image.:banghead:

[Loge23]

5. How come he's out of jail?

When these people are in?? Is there a republican/Dem thing going on here? The couple in the story - and their cohorts - openly supported Dems. Not to defend their actions, but what about Scott? How did he get away with it??

[cutlassmama]

4. they are crooks, they should go to jail.

[WhiteTara]

6. They stole $87 MILLION DOLLARS from us!

Snip

Duran and Valera, who once lived together in a waterfront condo, traveled overseas and owned luxury cars, co-owned American Therapeutic Corp. Until the feds shut down the Miami-based company last October, it operated a chain of seven mental-health clinics in South Florida and Orlando that duped Medicare into paying the couple’s business $87 million during the past decade.

Their lawyers, Lawrence Metsch and Arthur Tifford, contend that they should only be held liable for that loss to the federal healthcare program — not the $205 million in fraudulent claims their company submitted to Medicare.

The loss amount, depending on how the judge rules, will be a major factor in their sentencings.

In the past year, Duran and Valera were charged along with 32 other American Therapeutic employees, psychiatrists, counselors, nurses, marketers, patient recruiters and others who supplied Medicare beneficiaries in exchange for kickbacks. American Therapeutic billed Medicare for thousands of patients, including many with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, who had no way of benefiting from the company’s costly group-therapy sessions, prosecutors said.

Duran and several of the employees also held “charting” parties, where they would falsify the medical records of beneficiaries to make it look like they needed therapy when they actually didn’t.

[Larry Ogg]

7. And for every one crook that gets caught, there's probably a thousand that gets away with it.

But still, some psychopaths can't resist being so brazen, even when there's all sorts of ways to fleece the taxpayers through legalized crime.

Corporate lobbyist, along with bought and paid for venal politicians, have worked long and hard to legitimize the conscienceless behavior of predators.

Unfortunately, a predator sees all laws as being a restriction against their pathological greed, and their right to plunder honest people in any way they see fit.

[Cool Logic]

8. The severity of punishment for the types of crimes that undercut the foundation of our society

are not sufficient to deter perpetrators.

Fraud will cost Medicare and Medicaid about $100 billion this year. Clearly, that this money is seriously needed to provide medical care for American citizens.

Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years imprisonment and forfeiture of $17.179 billion, for Securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, money laundering, making false filings with the SEC, theft from an employee benefit plan.

If we are serious about eliminating the fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, we should institute a one-strike and your piece is off the board forever policy, for this type of crime.

[Marengo]

9. Would you mean exection by chance?

Not an attack, just curious as to the meaning of that phrase.

[Cool Logic]

12. I am opposed to the death penalty--not philosophically, but because it is not applied objectively.

Thus, the meaning of the phrase, is life in a cage.

[Marengo]

14. Understood, N/T

[Johnson20]

10. Perhaps a Gulag

on one of the Aleutians.

[Cool Logic]

13. I'm not advocating anything tortuous or manical...

However, Medicaid and Medicare are under tremendous financial strain and we simply can no longer tolerate the rampant fraud that has plagued these programs for years.

[No Elephants]

11. Someone here posted that stealing money from the U.S. is treason.

I think I am starting to agree.