The owner of a Miami-area HIV clinic has been sentenced to almost six years in prison for his part in a Medicare fraud scheme.
Jose Garcia, 55, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Miami to 57 months in prison for participating in a Medicare fraud scheme involving a Miami-area HIV clinic, according to the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services.
U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan also ordered Garcia to serve three years of supervised release and make restitution of $7,992,391.
Indicted in 2008, Garcia was a fugitive for nearly two years before surrendering to FBI agents in May 2010. He pled guilty in August 2010 to one count of conspiracy to cause the submission of false claims to the Medicare program and pay healthcare kickbacks and one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud.
According to court documents, Garcia ran the Global Med-Care Corporation, a medical clinic in Miami that supposedly treated patients with HIV. Investigators said Garcia and others used the company to submit claims to the Medicare program for expensive HIV medication that was medically unnecessary or never provided. In return for a share of Global Med-Care’s profits, Garcia agreed with others to oversee the staff necessary to operate Global Med-Care, the Medicare patients whom Global billed to the Medicare program and transportation for the patients.
Garcia told investigators he knew Global Med-Care would need to pay kickbacks to its patients and the clinic could bill Medicare for HIV infusion services three times a week, for up to three months, for each patient. Officials say that from April through August of 2003, Global Med-Care submitted approximately $10.9 million in claims to the Medicare program for HIV infusion services that were never provided.
Since its inception in March 2007, federal investigators have obtained indictments of more than 825 individuals who collectively have falsely billed the Medicare program for approximately $2 billion.