A Jacksonville medical business owner pleaded guilty May 26 to filing about 340,000 phony claims to Medicare in just six months to get $30 million worth of illegal reimbursements.
Madhukar Sharma, a 51-year-old permanent resident, could face up to five years in prison and deportation to his native India for conspiring to pay kickbacks to businesses that supplied customer information his companies needed to make the phony claims work.
Sharma’s case continues a series of business owners charged with trying to illegally cash in on a pandemic-era federal policy that paid businesses for supplying over-the-counter rapid antigen COVID-19 tests.
The policy, which ended when the government said in May 2023 that a COVID “public health emergency” was over, only required that someone enrolled in Medicare request the tests before a company mailed them out.
A plea agreement that Sharma signed and initialed said investigators interviewed lots of people who received COVID tests they never asked for.
The plea pointed out the example of a man in Wimberly, Texas who received tests from Sharma’s Medical Specialists of Northeast Florida but told investigators he had “no idea who these people are” and never asked for the tests.
The agreement said Sharma had “entered into agreement with other companies pursuant to which the companies provided lists of identifying information for Medicare beneficiaries” that could be used in Medicare claims.
In addition to Medical Specialists, the plea said Sharma operated companies called Ace Medical, Ace Biomedical, Forensic Stat Laboratory and Southern Plains Medical Center of Garvin County that together filed claims for $51.3 million in Medicare reimbursements on the tests between February 2023 and July 2023.
The agreement said Medicare paid $30 million of that amount to the businesses, all but one of which listed addresses at two buildings on Beach Boulevard east of University Boulevard.
Once Medicare sent payment, Sharma made sure companies that provided customer information were paid a fixed amount for each claim that Medicare approved, a straightforward deal that the agreement said amounted to a per-person kickback.
Sharma agreed to make full restitution of the $30 million, and the plea deal said $13.7 million had already been forfeited to the U.S. Marshal’s Office. Some of the rest was paid to companies that supplied the customer information used in the scam.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura Lothman Lambert questioned Sharma to be sure he’d read the entire agreement, then concluded he’d made an informed decision and said she’d recommend that U.S. District Judge Wendy Berger find him guilty.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Medicare scam may cost Jacksonville businessman prison time plus $30M
Reporting by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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