Former Miami drug trafficker now an accused Medicare scammer

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Wednesday, 07.27.11
Former Miami drug trafficker now an accused Medicare scammer


The Miami-Dade man behind an alleged Medicare scam was convicted of cocaine smuggling back in the 1990s, showing how easy it is to become a healthcare provider regardless of a felony history.
BY JAY WEAVER
[e-mail]

There is life after prison – in the Medicare rackets.

Consider Luis Alejandro Sanz, who served five years for cocaine smuggling and money laundering in the 1990s. He reinvented himself by opening a Miami-Dade home healthcare agency that authorities say billed Medicare more than $11 million to treat purported diabetics who, it turned out, didn’t really have the disease or need nurses to inject their insulin.

Medicare paid his home care agency more than $7 million. To cover up his management role, prosecutors say, Sanz made his wife, Elizabeth Acosta Sanz, the sole corporate officer of Ideal Home Health.

On Tuesday, the 57-year-old Sanz and 44-year-old wife were indicted on charges of conspiring to commit healthcare fraud, money laundering and paying kickbacks to recruiters who prosecutors say supplied Medicare patients to the couple’s agency between 2006 and 2009. The Sanzes are scheduled to be arraigned Friday.

Sanz’s reinvention as a Medicare entrepreneur is nothing new for freed felons. The federal program claims it regularly conducts criminal background checks on Medicare operators and has disqualified felons as a result, but many have slipped through the system.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/27/2334038/former-miami-drug-trafficker-now.html

[laconicsax]

1. Introducing the Florida's next governor: Luis Alejandro Sanz!

[pam4water]

6. Bawahahahaha He drug test will check you actually took drugs. No benefits w/o them!!!

[No Elephants]

2. We've been seeing stories like this lately, just as we saw a spate of

stories last year about how cushy public employees allegedly had it, compared with their supposed counterparts in the private sector.

I am sure there is lots of Medicare fraud and I am delighted people are getting caught at it, so neither of those things is my point. I am remarking only the coincidence of seeing a spate of stories about Medicare fraud, just before and during the time cuts to Medicare are also grabbing headline.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Miami has been the medicare fraud center of the universe for years,ask Jeb Bush's pal,Miguel Recarey

It's clear this story would have been FAR more publicized if it hadn't been for the medicare scammer's friend in "high places."
From Mother Jones' Bush Family Values:

Bush Family Value$
The Bush clan's family business

— By Stephen Pizzo

~snip~
Jeb and Miguel Recarey
With Miami awash in empty office space in 1986, it was no small event when bagged International Medical Centers as a key tenant for Padreda's HUD-financed building. IMC, which leased nearly all the space in Padreda's vacant building, was at the time one of the nation's fastest-growing health-maintenance organizations (HMO) and had become the largest recipient of federal Medicare funds.

IMC was run by Cuban-American Miguel Recarey, a character with a host of idiosyncrasies. He carried a 9-mm Heckler & Koch semiautomatic pistol under his suit coat and kept a small arsenal of AR-15 and Uzi assault rifles at his Miami estate, where his bedroom was protected by bullet-proof windows and a steel door. It apparently wasn't his enemies Recarey feared so much as his friends. He had a long-standing relationship with Miami Mafia godfather Santo Trafficante, Jr., and had participated in the illfated, CIA-inspired mob assassination plot against Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. (Associates of Recarey add that Trafficante was the money behind Recarey's business ventures.)

Recarey's brother, Jorge, also had ties to the CIA. So it was no surprise that IMC crawled with former spooks. Employee résumés were studded with references to the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Cuban Intelligence agency; there was even a fellow who claimed to have been a KGB agent, An agent with the U.S. Office of Labor Racketeering in Miami would later describe IMC as a company in which "a criminal enterprise interfaced with intelligence operations."

Recarey also surrounded himself with those who could influence the political system. He hired Jeb Bush as IMC's "real-estate consultant." Though Jeb would never close a single real-estate deal, his contract called for him to earn up to $250,000 (he actually received $75,000). Jeb's real value to Recarey was not in real estate but in his help in facilitating the largest HMO Medicare fraud in U.S. history.

More:
http://motherjones.com/politics/1992/09/bush-family-value

[BREMPRO]

7. it's just a coincidence.. The Obama admin has ramped up enforcement of Medicare fraud

actually doing something about it rather than talking or dithering like bushead. One of the many positive and effective things he's done that he's not gotten much credit for.

[Downwinder]

4. I don't guess we can deport felons to Cuba.

[lib2DaBone]

5. Sign this guy up as TeaBag Governor.

[freshwest]

8. Must be Scott's fall guy.

[izquierdista]

9. He's rehabilitated well

Will this "business experience", maybe he can run for governor.