A United States federal grand jury has indicted a Ghanaian doctor based in Tallahassee, Florida over a $23 million healthcare fraud.
Moses deGraft-Johnson is facing 58 count indictment related to defrauding Medicare and Medicaid by billing them for dozens of procedures that he never performed.
DeGraft-Johnson owned and operated the Heart and Vascular Institute of North Florida from September 2015.
His office manager, Kimberly Austin was also indicted, according to US media reports.
Federal prosecutors said in court on Friday that they believe there were more than 3,600 surgeries the Ghanaian billed over the last five years, with 85 to 90% of them being fraudulent.
According to court documents, the Tallahassee based doctor in some instances made claims for each patient for more than $21,000.
Federal prosecutors said in court that the amount of money that was improperly billed reached $23 million.
DeGraft-Johnson in other court documents claimed per his calendar that he performed 14 surgeries in one day but a prosecutor wrote that “28 hours of surgery will not fit into the time between 8:30 a.m. and 3:15 p.m..”
Prosecutors also said the procedure deGraft-Johnson claimed he performed is “relatively rare” and wasn’t even in the United States on some of those days.
He also did not have enough devices required to perform the numerous surgeries he billed patients for while traveling to Madrid, London and other cities in Ghana and China.
“The defendants used deGraft-Johnson’s privileges at a local hospital to contact patients recently treated at said hospital and schedule them for medically unnecessary appointments … for purposes of subsequently billing health care benefit programs for interventional vascular procedures which were not performed,” the indictment documents said.
His wife, child and one of his brothers were in court, sobbing throughout the hearing. His brother said “This is not in his character or this family’s character.”
DeGraft-Johnson was arraigned in federal court last week but he pleaded not guilty and his trial was set for March 23, 2020.
Source: Africafeeds.com
