A Florida primarily based Ghanaian physician has allegedly defrauded well being insurers to the tune of US$ 26 million with out performing surgical procedures on them as scheduled.
The accused, Moses DeGraft-Johnson is alleged to have falsely billed the insurers to bag the mentioned quantity to fund his ambitions of turning into the president of Ghana.
Federal prosecutors on the U.S. District Courtroom have charged Dr. DeGraff-Johnson with conspiracy to commit well being care fraud and greater than 50 counts of well being care fraud.
Based on courtroom papers, he had submitted a variety of fraudulent claims between September 2015 and now to well being insurers, together with Medicare, Medicaid, and Blue Cross and Blue Protect of Florida.
Reviews from the NY Occasions declare “Dr. DeGraff-Johnson, who owned and operated the Heart and Vascular Institute of North Florida in Tallahassee, a doctor’s office and outpatient catheterization lab, used his privileges at a hospital to poach patients for purposes of subsequently billing health care benefit programs for interventional vascular procedures that were never done.”
Investigations inside the Federal Division present that the surgeon inside a interval of 5 years carried out a minimum of 3,631 atherectomies resulting in the cost of a minimum of US$26.6 million from the well being insurers.
It additionally emerged that, there have been occasions that the accused was not even in America when among the procedures had been speculated to have been carried out.
Dr. DeGraff-Johnson, born in Ghana however a naturalized American citizen can be reported to have transferred a minimum of $1.eight million to individuals or entities in Ghana to realize his political ambitions.
Though state officers didn’t establish the relative concerned, courtroom papers proved that:
“Whereas the federal government isn’t able to guage the feasibility of such an endeavor, it seems that Dr. DeGraff-Johnson’s member of the family was the vice chairman of Ghana within the early 1980s.
Information from the Florida Division of Well being present that Dr. DeGraff-Johnson has been a licensed Florida physician since 2010.
He didn’t have any disciplinary actions or public complaints about him listed on its web site I’m not responsible
When he appeared in courtroom on Thursday, Dr. DeGraff-Johnson pleaded not responsible to the fees.
Through the detention listening to the next day, a lawyer for the accused, William Bubsey, mentioned his consumer was “a wonderful doctor,” and that the cash he despatched to Ghana was somewhat to help among the poor individuals in Ghana and never for private positive factors.
Supply: https://www.modernghana.com/
