A form of Medicare fraud is when someone knowingly bills Medicare to receive payment when they should not, or to receive higher payment than they should.
Yogesh K. Pancholi, 43, owned and operated a home health company based in Livonia, Michigan called Shring Home Care Inc. (Shring)
In 2017, Pancholi was prohibited from billing Medicare. He signed an affidavit whereby he agreed to a five-year voluntary exclusion from the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
In 2018, during his exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid, in order to conceal his ownership of the company, Pancholi purchased Shring Home Care Inc. using the personal information, (names, signatures) of others.
In a two-month period, Pancholi and his co-conspirators billed and were paid nearly $2.8 million by Medicare for services that were never provided. The fraudulent funds that Pancholi received were then transferred to shell corporation’s bank accounts which ultimately ended up landing in Pancholi’s accounts in India.
The jury convicted Yogesh Pancholi of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud, two counts of substantive health care fraud, two counts of money laundering, two counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of witness tampering.