These are some of the most infamous cases of poaching in Montana.
A Whitefish doctor who admitted defrauding Medicare and other federal government health programs through a telemedicine conspiracy that resulted in more than $31 million in false billing was sentenced Friday to six months in prison and ordered to pay $780,509 restitution, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Montana said.
Ronald David Dean, 64, pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy also ordered Dean to serve six months of home confinement, pay $100,000 in fines, and be placed on one year of supervised release after his confinement.
The case was part of the Justice Department's 2024 National Health Care Fraud Enforcement Action, a coordinated nationwide law enforcement effort that resulted in criminal charges against 193 defendants for their alleged participation in health care fraud and opioid abuse schemes that resulted in the submission of over $2.75 billion in alleged false billings, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release.
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The defendants allegedly defrauded programs entrusted for the care of the elderly and disabled to line their own pockets, and the government, in connection with the enforcement action, seized over $231 million in cash, luxury vehicles, gold and other assets.
The government alleged in court documents that Dean, a licensed physician, was paid by a telemedicine company to sign orders for durable medical equipment that patients did not need. Dean then fraudulently charged Medicare, CHAMPVA and the Railroad Retirement Board programs for telemedicine office visits that did not occur.
The conspiracy ran from about January 2022 until July 2023, authorities said.
The telemedicine company also used Dean's information to prescribe unneeded and unnecessary COVID tests to patients. The total amount billed to Medicare, the VA and the Railroad Retirement Board based on orders Dean signed was $31,432,001, and the total amount paid from those programs was $13,785,724.
Dean used information provided by people he did not know, with an unknown amount of training or experience, to prescribe braces for beneficiaries he did not see or evaluate himself. Dean frequently did not even talk to the beneficiaries, and when he did it was to tell them the braces were approved. Dean had no idea if those people who received braces actually needed them. With the COVID-19 tests, Dean provided blanket authorization for the telemedicine company to send out tests to anyone and bill Medicare for as many COVID tests as the company desired.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Montana worked with the Department's Criminal Division and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, Railroad Retirement Board Office of Inspector General and FBI.
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