MIAMI, April 2 (UPI) -- The former owner of a Medicare billing service was sentenced to 10 years Wednesday in Miami for her role in a $170 million scheme to defraud the program.
Miami resident Rita Campos Ramirez, 60, also was ordered to forfeit $207,000, her three homes and an automobile; and to pay $105 million in restitution to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Campos pleaded guilty last August to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and one count of submitting false claims to Medicare. Campos owned and operated R&I Medical Billing Inc., a medical billing company that specialized in submitting bills to the Medicare program on behalf of HIV infusion clinics.
Campos admitted that between 2002 and 2006 she knowingly submitted about $170 million in fraudulent medical bills to Medicare on behalf of 75 HIV infusion clinics in Miami-Dade County.
Infusion clinics provide medication intravenously to HIV patients.
The U.S. Justice Department said the Campos case is part of a broader investigation by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force into HIV infusion fraud in the south Florida area.
