Lavaca, Arkansas, man ordered to pay nearly $30 million in healthcare fraud case

Robert Medley, Fort Smith Times Record
Updated ·2 min read
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A Lavaca, Arkansas, man was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay $29.8 million in a healthcare fraud and money laundering scheme.

Billy Joe Taylor, 44, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and money laundering on Oct. 27, 2022. He was ordered to pay $29,835,825.99 in restitution, the U.S. Attorney's office for the Western District of Arkansas said.

Taylor and co-conspirators submitted more than $134 million in false claims to Medicare in connection with diagnostic laboratory testing, including urine drug testing and tests for respiratory illnesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

The claims were medically unnecessary, were not ordered by medical providers, and were not provided as represented, prosecutors alleged.

Taylor and co-conspirators were accused of obtaining medical information and private personal information for Medicare beneficiaries, and then misusing that confidential information to repeatedly submit claims to Medicare for diagnostic tests, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

Taylor and his co-conspirators received more than $38 million from Medicare on those fraudulent claims, prosecutors alleged.

U.S. Attorney David Clay Fowlkes for the Western District of Arkansas; Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Special Agent in Charge James A. Dawson, of the FBI’s Little Rock division; Special Agent in Charge Jason Meadows of the Department of Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General, Dallas regional office; and Special Agent in Charge Christopher Altemus of the IRS-Criminal Investigation, Dallas field office, were involved in the case.

The FBI, HHS-OIG, and IRS-Criminal Investigation team investigated the case.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Elser of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas and Senior Litigation Counsel Jim Hayes and Trial Attorney D. Keith Clouser of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section’s National Rapid Response Strike Force prosecuted the case, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

The fraud section leads the criminal division’s efforts to combat health care fraud through a health care fraud strike force.

Since March 2007, 15 strike forces operating in 25 federal districts have charged more than 5,000 defendants who had billed federal healthcare programs and private insurers more than $24 billion, the U.S. Attorney said.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, working with the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, are taking steps to hold providers accountable for their involvement in healthcare fraud schemes, the U.S. Attorney said.

This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Multimillion-dollar health care fraud case gets man 15 years in prison