Fraud Gone Wild.................

1st arrest made in Medicare fraud case

Thursday in Detroit, Shafrulla Hanif Abdul was charged by federal agents with one count of executing a scheme to defraud a health care benefit program. Abdul worked under the names, Hand-On Rehab Services Inc. and M&M Management Inc. His scheme was a follows:

"According to an FBI affidavit, Abdul paid Medicare recipients hundreds of
dollars to provide their Medicare ID numbers and repeatedly put their signatures
on blank sheets of paper. Abdul sold the fraudulent documents to companies that
billed Medicare for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and possibly millions, in
physical therapy services that were never performed, the complaint alleges. "

Special Agent Elna Marchi-Woznak, head of the FBI's Health Care Fraud squad in Detroit was interviewed and stated that this type of fraud is out of control. This case is considered to be the first of a series of indictments that will be handed out for complex, multimillion-dollar schemes across Metro Detroit that bilk Medicare through fraudulent billing.

Although I am not a fan of Big Brother, intervention is needed to ensure these programs for the poor are safe guarded from this type of abuse.

Wild