‘Waste of taxpayer money’: Riverview assisted living facility receives thousands of expired Covid tests weekly, owner says
TAMPA, Fla. (WLFA) — Cliff Scott, the owner of Angles Touch, an assisted living facility in Riverview, said he is receiving thousands of unwanted and unordered Covid test kits a week.
“This is a waste of taxpayer money,” Scott said.
Scott said his facility served as a test site during the pandemic, but the delivery of test kits, paid for by the government, never stopped. And now, the deliveries have ramped up, he said, and sometimes two boxes show up a week. The tests, he said, are always expired.
Each box contains hundreds, sometimes thousands of test kits, he said.
“We can’t get anyone to stop them,” Scott said. “The impact may seem small to some people because we’re just one facility, but I look at it on a national basis.”
The shipping label offers few clues.
Scott said he calls the phone number listed on the label, but gets no answer. The label said they’re from HHS, likely Heath and Human Services, the very department where an Inspector General is tasked with investigating Medicare Covid testing fraud.
There’s an address on Winchester Road in Memphis, Tennessee, but it’s for an industrial warehouse used by numerous businesses.
“I’ve even spent money and sent two shipments back to them and then they came back the next week,” Scott said.
You may recall previous Better Call Behnken investigations about individual Medicare recipients receiving Covid tests and Medicare footing the bill.
Those reports spawned several ongoing criminal fraud investigations. So now, Consumer Investigator Shannon Behnken reached out to the Inspector General to ask about the shipments arriving at Angles Touch and the taxpayer money being wasted.
A spokeswoman HHS said she can’t speak on an individual’s case but asked that Scott, and any other viewer with a similar issue, contact their fraud hotline. You can find that information by visiting tips.hhs.gov or calling 1-800-HHS-TIPS (1-800-447-8477).
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