Dr. Moses D. Degraft-Johnson of the Heart and Vascular Institute of Northern Florida in Tallahassee is accused of taking $26 million from health insurance agencies for phony medical procedures. According to federal prosecutors, Dr. Degraft-Johnson allegedly went to hospitals, scheduled patients for unnecessary visits, and billed for the services that never occurred. In some cases, the doctor was traveling when he claims to have done procedures in his office.
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Filed under Fraud, Healthcare
A Davie lawyer, Stuart Finkelstein, was arrested on Tuesday for collecting nearly $1M by filing over 300 unauthorized lawsuits on behalf of disabled Americans in New York and Florida. Finkelstein allegedly stole the identities of two individuals and filed lawsuits claiming they were unable to access public establishments that they had never tried to go in. Neither of the people had ever hired Finklestein as an attorney to represent them.
Finkelstein made false representations to small businesses, obstructed official judicial proceedings, and then settled the fake lawsuits to collect about $930,000 in attorney fees. Micheline Gaulin, a restaurant owner in Manhattan’s West Village, told the NY Post that she paid over $18,000 in a settlement to Finklestein in which she called “a legal shakedown.”
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Filed under Fraud
Police in Perry, FL are receiving reports about possible scammers billing insurance companies for windshield repairs but not completing the work. The reports say that two people claim to work for “At Home Auto Glass” out of Sarasota. Police are working to identify the suspects.
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Filed under Fraud
According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), driver errors and Tesla’s Autopilot design may be the cause of a crash involving Tesla’s Model and a parked fire truck in California. The NTSB cited the driver’s “inattention and over-reliance” noting that the driver kept his hands off the wheel for the majority of a 13 minute and 48-second trip.
Tesla’s Autopilot was engaged during at least three fatal U.S. crashes. However, Tesla says their owners have driven billions of miles with Autopilot engaged and that its data “indicates that drivers using Autopilot remain safer than those operating without assistance.”
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Filed under Technology
Home care businessman Roland Brown pleaded guilty to paying $1M in bribes to a long-time friend who worked for the Department of Veteran Affairs. The scheme defrauded the organization’s benefits program for children with spina bifida. According to Brown’s plea, he allegedly set up Legacy Home Health in order to submit more than $3 million in false claims to the VA. This scheme is only one of several scams pulled off by Brown’s friend.
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Filed under Fraud, Healthcare
Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis is urging insurance companies to resolve the more than 21,000 open insurance claims related to Hurricane Michael. On the 9-month anniversary of Hurricane Michael, CFO Patronis released a statement to acknowledge “great strides in recovery,” but noted there’s a lot more work to do.
Click here to read the release.
Filed under Property (Homeowners)
Former insurance agent Stuart Alan Starr of One Stop Insurance Agency pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud in April 2019. Starr’s brother, Glen Wayne Starr pled guilty to the conspiracy to commit wire fraud in August 2018. The brothers received the same sentence of 101 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. They are both been ordered to pay over $20 million in restitution to the financial institutions they defrauded.
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Filed under Fraud
According to Florida Chief Financial Officer Patronis, “In 2018, there were 9,300 pedestrian crashes and of those, an estimated 25 percent were staged.”
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Filed under Fraud, Personal Injury Protection (PIP)
Jessica Linton of Clearwater and Juan Rodriguez of Tampa are two of 10 people who were charged in an indictment alleging over $200 million in insurance fraud. Linton is facing 24 charges in the indictment while Rodriguez is facing 6 charges including health care fraud, mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. The scheme included altering prescriptions to add non-prescribed drugs including Tramadol and ketamine.
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Filed under Fraud, Healthcare
Favorable decision from the Third District Court of Appeal upholding Defendant’s Proposal for Settlement and entitlement to attorney’s fees in a case where the Plaintiff claimed that the declaratory relief count filed along with a breach of contract count invalidated the Insurer’s Proposal for Settlement.
To read the appellate decision, click here.
Filed under Property (Homeowners)
