The Department of Justice announced on Friday that it’s charging 138 individuals—together with 42 docs, nurses, and myriad medical professionals working in telemedicine—for allegedly taking part in a group of healthcare fraud schemes that wound up costing taxpayers round $1.4 billion in losses. The greatest offender? Telemedicine fraud, in response to the DOJ, which was accountable for greater than three-quarters of the misplaced funds.

More than $1.1 billion in allegedly phony claims had been submitted by 43 of the culprits concerned within the telemedicine fraud case, who collectively spent these proceeds on “luxury items, including vehicles, yachts, and real estate,” the Justice Department mentioned.

Citing court docket information, it laid out the alleged scheme like so: First, the accused telemedicine executives would allegedly pay docs and nurses to order pointless, costly medical tools, diagnostic testing, and ache meds, all bought with little (if any) affected person interplay on their half. Next, medical tools suppliers, genetic testing labs, and pharmacies would all purchase again these sham purchases in change for “illegal kickbacks and bribes,” the DOJ mentioned, earlier than submitting greater than $1.1 billion in phony claims to Medicare or different issuers. In some circumstances, these identical medical professionals are alleged to have billed Medicare for telehealth consultations “that did not occur as represented,” no matter that may imply.

Other schemes talked about within the DOJ’s expenses embody “various health care fraud schemes designed to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic,” like exploiting the increased access some suppliers needed to affected person’s well being knowledge. In these circumstances, 9 of the defendants are alleged to have used that newfound knowledge entry to submit Medicare claims for “unrelated, medically unnecessary, and expensive laboratory tests, including cancer genetic testing.” The DOJ’s charging 9 of the defendants on this specific heist, which it says concerned greater than $29 million in phony billings.

The remainder of the circumstances listed by the DOJ solely get scummier from there. Five of the accused spent an unnamed sum that they’d pulled from the federal Provider Relief Fund on Las Vegas casinos and luxurious vehicles, fairly than the COVID-19 sufferers it was meant for. Nineteen are medical professionals who had been charged with prescribing roughly 12 million doses of opioids and different extremely addictive narcotics, whereas additionally submitting $14 million in phony billings on the backend. Another $133 million in false claims had been allegedly submitted by defendants who had been concerned with a phony sober home that will invoice residents for drug testing when it wasn’t medically required—“often billing thousands of dollars for a single test,” the DOJ mentioned.

The remaining expenses being made right here largely contain “more traditional categories,” of your well being care fraud dedicated by greater than 60 of the remaining defendants, in response to the DOJ. They’re charged with submitting roughly $145 million in phony insurance coverage claims for medical care that was “medically unnecessary and often never provided,” the Justice Department mentioned.

It’s fairly tough seeing all of it laid out like that, however the DOJ’s announcement lays naked what you probably already knew: that the worldwide pandemic has left numerous us sicker, sadder, and customarily more desperate than we’ve ever been earlier than, all whereas scoundrels get wealthy. Calvin Shivers, who helps direct the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, famous in his assertion concerning the heist that these types of fraud schemes are explicitly designed are sometimes focused susceptible populations. And if the nation’s recent surge in covid-19 circumstances is any indication, the real, human cost from these scams will carry on surging proper together with it.