Texas Government Lobbyist News: Two Mission Residents Indicted for Health Care Fraud
The owner of a McAllen area ambulance company and one of it’s former billers have just been indicted for multiple crimes in fraudulent claims. Frank Gonzalez and Graciela Escamilla have been charged and are now facing a federal indictment for their alleged involvement in a scheme to scam Medicare and Medicaid through fraudulent billings. They were arrested on October 18th, and their trial is set for December 3rd. Between them, they hold the following charges: One count of an attempt to commit health care fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, and seven counts of health care fraud.
Between June 2007 and February 2011, Gonzalez and Escamilla were involved in sending an estimated 1,524 false claims. This comes out to about $638,090 billed to Medicare and Medicaid for (non-existent) ambulance transportation services of dialysis patients. In addition, the indictment alleges that Medicare and Texas Medicaid actually paid out more than $335,000 in these false claims.
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