Minal Patel, 44, of Atlanta, owned LabSolutions LLC, a lab enrolled with Medicare that performed sophisticated genetic tests. Patel conspired with patient brokers, telemedicine companies, and call centres to target Medicare beneficiaries with telemarketing calls falsely stating that Medicare covered expensive cancer genetic tests, according to prosecutors.

Medicare is the federal health insurance programme for people over 65 and the disabled.

After the Medicare beneficiaries agreed to take a test, Patel paid kickbacks and bribes to patient brokers to obtain signed doctors’ orders authorising the tests from telemedicine companies, prosecutors said. To conceal the kickbacks and bribes, Patel required patient brokers to sign sham contracts, they said.

Patel was convicted by a federal jury in Florida late last year of healthcare fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and payment of illegal healthcare kickbacks.

From July 2016 through August 2019, LabSolutions submitted more than US$463 million in claims to Medicare, including for medically unnecessary genetic tests, of which Medicare paid over US$187 million, the Justice Department said. In that time frame, Patel personally received over US$21 million in Medicare proceeds, prosecutors added.

Patel was indicted in 2019 on charges of healthcare fraud and paying and receiving kickbacks to and from marketers who collected cheek swabs from patients for genetic testing.

Back then, US federal agents raided genetic testing laboratories, and 35 people were criminally charged in four states in a crackdown on genetic testing fraud that officials said caused US$2.1 billion in losses to federal healthcare insurance programmes.