Cuban immigrants recruited in massive Medicare scam, feds say. 2 in Miami sent to prison
Two Miami-Dade business owners are going to prison for more than eight years for running a massive $93 million Medicare fraud scheme that involved the recruitment of Cuban immigrants.
The immigrants would serve as the purported owners of home healthcare companies to hide the pair’s role in the scheme that bilked the tax-payer funded program.
Karel Felipe, 42, of Miami Shores, and Tamara Quicutis, 54, of Hialeah, were found guilty at trial in October of conspiring with others to submit $93 million in false claims for unprovided medical services by using lists of Medicare patients’ stolen identities — even after some had died, according to federal prosecutors.
Felipe and Quicutis, who were convicted of conspiracies to commit health care fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, were also ordered Thursday by U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz to pay back more than $44 million to the U.S. government that their companies received from the Medicare program.
They did not act alone. Four other co-conspirators were also convicted and sentenced last year for their roles in ripping off the Medicare program for the elderly and indigent.
Jesus Trujillo, 52, of Miami, who pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy charges, was sentenced to 14 years in prison and also ordered to pay back more than $44 million to the government. He was accused of overseeing a group in charge of recruiting Cuban immigrants that would serve as purported owners, prosecutors said.
According to a federal indictment, Felipe, Quicutis, Trujillo and other co-conspirators from Miami-Dade helped submit false bills to Medicare on behalf of three home healthcare companies — Care, Nu-Wave and Tri-County — that operated in Michigan from October 2016 to May 2019.
“These false and fraudulent claims included claims for services that were purportedly provided to Medicare beneficiaries after they had died,” the indictment says.
Prosecutors said the co-conspirators recruited “individuals from Cuba” to sign Medicare enrollment documents to appear as the owners of the home healthcare companies in an attempt to conceal the identities of Felipe, Quicutis and others involved in the scheme.
After submitting the false claims, Felipe, Quicutis and others used hundreds of shell companies and bank accounts in Florida and other states to launder the Medicare fraud proceeds and convert the proceeds into cash at Miami-area ATMs and check-cashing stores, prosecutors said.
Also convicted in the scheme: co-conspirators Didier Arcia, 44, Alexey Gil, 41, and Jeffrey Avila, 33, who pleaded guilty to related charges last year. Respectively, they were sentenced to six years and eight months; five years and five months; and two years and six months.
The case against a seventh co-conspirator, Yordan Remedio Betancourt, remains active — though the defendant has not been arrested, court records show.
The FBI and the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigated the case. Since March 2007, the Department of Justice’s Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program, working with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami and others around the country, has charged more than 5,400 defendants who collectively have billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $27 billion.
