A former Downtown loft-dweller and his partner in a scheme that used Skid Row residents to defraud the publicly subsidized Medicare and Medi-Cal healthcare systems must pay a $10 million fine to the federal government under terms of a recent settlement in a civil lawsuit against them.
Former Downtown resident Robert Bourseau and Dr. Rudra Sabaratnam of the upscale Brentwood district on the Westside are also awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to criminal charges in the case.
The two are former owners of the City of Angels Medical Center, which operated in the Echo Park district northwest of Downtown and has more recently come under new management and changed names. Among the charges to which Bourseau and Sabaratnam have pleaded guilty are accusations that they recruited homeless individuals in the Skid Row district of Downtown for unnecessary medical treatments, then fraudulently billed the Medicare and Medi-Cal systems.
The scheme employed paid "recruiters" employed at homeless shelters in Skid Row to deliver homeless clients by ambulance to the hospital in Echo Park, according to federal officials.
A former senior executive of City of Angels Medical Center and two of the "recruiters" have also pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the scheme.
Federal prosecutors also alleged that payments made by City of Angels Medical centers to the recruiters constituted illegal inducements in violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute. The federal law prohibits certain types of payments or incentives that are intended to induce the referral of patients for health services paid for by the federal government.
Prohibitions against illegal kickbacks are important to ensure that financial motives do not undermine the integrity of the medical judgment of physicians and other healthcare workers, said Tony West, a spokesperson for the Justice Department.
"Performing unnecessary medical procedures just to take money from taxpayers' pockets is bad enough, but to prey on homeless people struggling to survive day to day is particularly reprehensible," West said. `"We won't tolerate illegal conduct and we will continue to hold companies, institutions and individuals accountable for health care fraud."
Sam Hassan is a writer for the L.A. Garment & Citizen.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
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