Four personal-injury lawyers were arrested on September 6 for allegedly running an illegal health care kickback scheme in South Florida.
Steven Slootsky, who has a law office in Boca Raton, and Adam Hurtig, Mark Spatz, and Vincent Pravato, who have law offices in Fort Lauderdale, are accused of referring car-accident victims to health care facilities that paid them cash for the referrals, records show.
All four face charges ranging from money laundering to organized fraud and patient brokering. They have all bonded out of jail. Slootsky, 57, faces 15 charges and was released on $13,000 bond. Hurtig, 46, faces 14 charges and was released on $18,000 bond. Spatz, 38, faces 13 charges and was released on $13,000 bond. Pravato, 48, faces three charges and was released on $2,750 bond.
According to the arrest report, the four men paid runners from towing companies and body shops to solicit car-accident victims for them. They then referred the victims to Broward Spine Associates or Margate Physicians for medical treatment, and the clinics would pay them for the referrals.
“They were actively involved in illegal patient brokering and the unlawful solicitation of motor-vehicle accident victims throughout South Florida,” arrest records state. “After the patient was brokered to the health care facility, the facility was then able to begin treatment and bill the auto insurance companies for claims covered by the PIP benefits, which resulted in fraud on the insurance companies.”
Under federal law, it is illegal for a doctor, clinic, or other health care provider to pay for patient referrals. It is also illegal for a “patient broker” to receive monetary kickbacks for sending patients to a health care provider.
Health care fraud is one of the most commonly prosecuted offenses in Florida. 18.4% of all cases prosecuted in the state involve a fraud-related offense, which is almost twice the national average. There are many different types of health care fraud schemes. The most common ones include:
- Medical facilities billing insurance companies for services never rendered
- Payment of kickbacks to patient brokers
- Billing patients for non-covered services as covered services
- Prescription of unnecessary medication
- Filing duplicate billing for the same services
- Intentionally reporting unnecessary procedures or false diagnoses to inflate payment
- Filing insurance claim forms containing fraudulent information.
A typical health care fraud case usually contains multiple counts. For example, if a person is accused of committing fraud by filing a different claim with Medicare every day for 30 days, then prosecutors can charge them with 30 counts of health care fraud. Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Even though health care fraud is considered a white collar crime, it is usually punished very severely in order to deter the practice. Despite the severe penalties, some statistics estimate that at least 10% of all funds paid by the U.S. government for health care were fraudulently obtained. The real figures are likely much higher because many heath care fraud schemes go undetected.