A 39-year-old Indian-American nurse was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment by a US court on 25 May for committing a wire fraud which he confessed to in October 2020.
Trivikram Reddy has been convicted for devising and engaging in a scheme to defraud Medicare and private insurance providers Blue Cross Shield of Texas, Aetna, United Healthcare, Humana and Cigna of more 52 million US Dollars.
Prosecutors said Reddy created fraudulent patient bills by using the provider numbers of six physicians as the treating physicians on the claims, even though they did not perform the services, reported PTI.
Reddy operated three medical clinics – Waxahachie Medical, Texas Care Clinics and Vcare Health Service. In 2019, Federal agents investigated one of his clinics and found the staff manufacturing medical records, after which Reddy had to shut shop. Thereafter, he had to shut his other clinics too.
When nurse practitioner Trivikram Reddy stole the identities of physicians to defraud Medicare and other insurers to enrich himself, he violated the basic trust that the public extends to healthcare professionals.Miranda Bennett of the HHS Office of Inspector General Dallas regional office to PTI
Federal agents had asked for medical records in order to justify Medicare claims paid between 2014 to 2019 and they found Reddy’s staff indulging in fake records to show the authorities. He finally pleaded guilty in 2020.
(With inputs from the PTI)
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