Miami Pharmacy Owner of Convicted of Medicare Fraud, Co-defendant Acquitted
After a six day trial in Miami, a federal jury in Miami convicted Gustavo Smith, 43, the owner of a Miami pharmacy for his role in a $3 million Medicare fraud scheme and for money laundering of all 17 counts charged against him in the September 2007 Indictment.
The charges included: conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, to commit health care fraud, and to submit false claims to the Medicare program; seven counts of health care fraud; seven counts of submitting false claims to the Medicare program; conspiracy to commit money laundering; and one count of money laundering.
Smith’s co-defendant, Friedhelm Schock, the nominee owner of Medstar, was acquitted by the jury on all charged counts.
According to Schock's defense attorney, Michael Band of Adorno & Yoss, the government argued that Schock was the "nominee" owner of the pharmacy, signed all the Medicare documents, opened all the bank accounts, formed the corporation, received monies far in excess of what reflected the work he performed at the pharmacy and lied to the government to cover up the fraud.
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Check this out. Usually you would think of a psychiatrist as being someone who treats patients who suffer from auditory or visual hallucinations. However, an Illinois psychiatrist is headed to federal prison for two and a half years for defrauding Medicare of $1.75 million for submitting bills to Medicare for patients he never saw.
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Ben Kuehne was my law partner for 5+ years during the 1980'-1990's (Sonnett…Kuehne) and he mentored me since 1983 when I served as his 'associate' at the predecessor firm, Bierman, Sonnett, Shohat et. al.
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