WASHINGTON – A Miami-area resident who helped pay illegal kickbacks and transported ineligible patients to a fraudulent mental health company was sentenced today to 46 months in prison for her role in a scheme to falsely bill Medicare, announced the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Leyanes Placeres, 32, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Seitz in the Southern District of Florida. In addition to her prison term, Placeres was sentenced to three years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $2.7 million in restitution. Placeres pleaded guilty in March 2012 to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and one count of conspiracy to pay and receive illegal kickbacks.
According to court documents, for more than one year, Placeres transported patients to American Therapeutic Corporation (ATC), a corporation that purported to operate partial hospitalization programs (PHPs) in seven different locations throughout south Florida and Orlando. A PHP is a form of intensive treatment for severe mental illness. The patients Placeres transported did not qualify for the services purportedly rendered by ATC. ATC then billed Medicare for false, fake and fictitious services for the patients transported by Placeres and others.
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