By CRA News Service
BOCA RATON – Investigators from several law enforcement and regulatory agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday raided a Medicare and medical supply company, which has ties to Danny Porush, who helped inspire the film “The Wolf of Wall Street”.
The agents spent hours removing several boxes and computers from the Med-Care Diabetic & Medical Supplies company, at 933 Clint Moore Road.
Authorities were tight lipped about the operation, saying only that were “conducting law enforcement activity.”
Workers said the law enforcement officials arrived shortly after 9:30 a.m. and told nearly 200 of them to go home.
One employee told WPTV Ch-5 that if there is something wrong she hopes it is fixed soon.
“I think you know, this is what has to be done,” said the woman, who was identified only as Sarah. “If it’s a problem, problem has to be resolved. We want to work in a nice place, decent place. We help people, it’s a medical, you know it’s a medical and we are working for patients.”
The attorney for the company, Justin S. Weddle of Brown Rudnick, said Med-Care Diabetic & Medical Supplies, Inc. has always been fully transparent in cooperating with regulatory or governmental inquiries that it receives.
“This inquiry is no different,” Weddle said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. “In fact, in July of last year, we learned that a federal regulatory agency was inquiring about Med-Care’s business practices, and we contacted them and offered to answer their questions and provide whatever information they needed.”
Court documents show that Tiffany Bumbury, a former employee of an affiliated company, East End Associates filed a whistleblower lawsuit that accused the company of Medicare fraud.
Bumbury said in the suit that the company, which operates call centers in Boca Raton and New York, cold calls seniors on Medicare, which is generally prohibited. It then sends supplies that are medically unnecessary and not requested by the beneficiary, she alleges in the suit. She said the company provided a script of “materially false statements,” and encouraged she and other telemarketers to “say whatever they needed to say” to secure a sale. Then, she said, the company billed Medicare. Exhibits associated with her suit include copies of mailing labels in which recipients refused the medical supplies shipped by the company.
Medicare paid Med-Care more than $84 million between 2009 and 2012 through this illicit scheme, the lawsuit claims.
A federal judge in Palm Beach County however dismissed the suit, saying that Bumbury, who worked three months in the New York office, did not provide enough evidence to back up her claim.
Nonetheless, the U.S. government joined the lawsuit, because it alleges federal Medicare money was stolen.
A congressional committee has also examined the company’s tactics. South Florida has long been the nation’s leader in health care fraud.
Med-Care lists Porush as its executive vice president. However, in her suit, Bumbury said he is actually an owner.
Porush was convicted of insider trading, perjury, conspiracy and money laundering and ordered to pay $200 million in restitution for his acts.