Christopher White of Destrehan was sentenced to 48 months in prison for his involvement in a $50 million New Orleans-area Medicare fraud scheme.
U.S. District Judge Sarah S. Vance of the Eastern District of Louisiana, also ordered White, an accountant, to pay $2.27 million in restitution.According to admissions made in connection with his plea agreement, White was an accountant for multiple companies in a home health care fraud scheme carried out in and around New Orleans over the course of more than 10 years.
Among other things, White coordinated the payment of illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters who canvassed the streets of New Orleans to collect Medicare numbers from elderly and disabled Medicare recipients.
When a grand jury subpoena was issued to certain companies, he and others fabricated and backdated tax and employment records to conceal the fact that illegal kickbacks were being paid to these recruitersAccording to the plea agreement, from 2007 through 2014, the companies involved in the scheme submitted more than $56 million in claims to Medicare, the vast majority of which were fraudulent.
Medicare paid approximately $50.7 million on these claims.Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Kenneth A. Polite of the Eastern District of Louisiana, Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey S. Sallet of the FBI’s New Orleans Field Office, Special Agent in Charge C.J. Porter of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General’s (HHS-OIG) Dallas Regional Office and the Louisiana Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit made the announcement.
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