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As the nationwide crackdown on home healthcare fraud continues to intensify, a US attorney hopes the conviction of California home health agency chief executive officer in connection with a Medicare fraud scheme “sends a strong message.”
District Judge James Donato in federal court in San Francisco last week convicted Simon Katz, 43 of Boca Raton, FL, of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud following a six-day jury trial. Katz and his wife, Veronica Katz, the former CEO of HealthNow Home Healthcare in Hayward, CA, and two other employees of the company allegedly engaged in a scheme to defraud Medicare by having unqualified medical professionals provide care for home health patients outside their authorized scope of practice, billing Medicare for services that were never provided, submitting false documents to state inspectors, and instructing former employees to lie to the FBI and federal law enforcement to conceal their fraudulent activity, according to evidence presented at trial…