Doctor Ordered Radio Host Wife's Killing to Protect Illegal Drug Ring, prosecutors say

A New Jersey endocrinologist hired a member of a motorcycle gang to kill his wife more than five years ago after she threatened to expose an illegal prescription drug ring the doctor was running with the gang, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon Tyner announced murder charges against James Kauffman, 68, in the May 2012 death of his wife, April. Ferdinand Augello, 61, a member of the Pagan Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, was also charged with murder in April Kauffman's death was also charged with trying to have James Kauffman killed. James Kauffman has since committed suicide while in custody awaiting trial.
Six other members of the gang were charged in connection with the drug ring.
Prosecutors said that Kauffman gave free prescriptions to people sent by Augello and that Augello would receive $1,000 per script or a number of pills after the prescription were filled. Those that received them either used the drugs or sold them.


The prosecutor told reporters that April Kaufman, a local radio personality who hosted a weekly program in the Atlantic City market, had threatened to divorce her husband over the scheme, a few days later she was found dead in her bedroom from gunshot wounds.
The trigger man has been identified as Frank Mullholland who died of an overdose of drugs in 2013. Since 2012 James Kaufman has be free or awaiting trial. He couldn’t wait any longer and took his own life.

This is more of the same pharmaceutical and medical fraud of criminal banding together. Doctors, psychiatrists, drug games and pharmaceutical companies. Where there is money and addiction you will find pharmaceutical companies and their enables Medical doctors

Senator Targets Abusive High Prescribing Antipsychotic Medicaid Doctors

Senator Grassley contacted all States to request statistics of top prescribing doctors in 2006. Senator Grassley is an Iowa Republican and he recently sent letters to some thirty states asking what those states have done to investigate over prescribing doctors of antipsychotics. Well some of the states are not doing so well in tackling this problem. Florida has allowed several physicians to continue to subscribe to Medicaid patients. Even though there is at least an appearance of prescription fraud and elder abuse.

According to ProPublica a number of the top-prescribing Medicaid doctors around the country are listed twelve pharmaceutical companies in payments to physicians for speaking and consulting Medicaid. These were jointly funded by the states and federal government, providing health care coverage to about 60 million low income enrollees. Also according to ProPublica Grassley’s letter to Ohio notes that the top prescriber of the anti-psychotic Abilify wrote 13,825 prescriptions in 2009 which is about 54 prescriptions per weekday. Ohio paid $6.7 million for that those prescriptions, state officials reported to Grassley. There are reports of almost 20,000 prescriptions of Seoquel at a Medicaid cost of almost $6 million. This noted by Grassley is nine prescriptions an hour.
Senator Grassley was quoted “If state and federal taxpayers are being cheated because of inappropriate prescriptions,” Grassley said, “the state and federal governments have to get to the bottom of it and stop it.”
We applaud the Senator for attacking this issue head on. Not just for the potential financial gain to these doctors and losses to the US tax payers, but also for the massive drugging of older Americans. These doctors are taking advantage of the most vulnerable of citizens all for money. They are tarnishing their own profession. At least one Senator is making the charge. Now we need the public to contact their local and state representative to push them investigate this grave and disgusting practice. There is a link on our website and here http://www.statelocalgov.net/ All citizens will be older in time. Do you want this to happen to you or to ones you love?

Psychiatrist Pleads Guilty Role in $200 Million Medicare Fraud Scheme

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 30, 2011

WASHINGTON - A Miami-area psychiatrist pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Miami for his part in a fraud scheme that resulted in the submission of more than $200 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare, the Department of Justice, FBI and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)announced.

Dr. Alan Gumer, 64, of Tamarac, Fla., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Gumer was charged on Feb. 15, 2011, with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and four counts of health care fraud.

According to court documents, Gumer was a psychiatrist at American Therapeutic Corporation (ATC), a Florida corporation headquartered in Miami. ATC 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.

Gumer admitted that he signed evaluations, notes and other documents in medical files for patients who did not need the treatment for which ATC billed Medicare. Specifically, as a psychiatrist, Gumer knew that the patients attending ATC did not need intensive mental health treatment, and that the treatments offered by ATC were not the type of intensive treatments a PHP should provide. Gumer admitted that he signed these files without examining the patients, or writing and reading the statements he was signing. Gumer also admitted to writing prescriptions for psychiatric medications for patients who did not need them in order to make it appear to Medicare that the patients qualified for PHP treatment. According to court documents, Gumer also referred hundreds of ATC patients to a related company, the American Sleep Institute (ASI), for unnecessary diagnostic sleep disorder testing.

According to court filings, Gumer’s co-defendants and ATC’s owners and operators paid kickbacks to owners and operators of assisted living facilities (ALFs) and halfway houses and to patient brokers in exchange for delivering ineligible patients to ATC and ASI. In some cases, the patients received a portion of those kickbacks. Throughout the course of the ATC and ASI conspiracy, millions of dollars in kickbacks were paid in exchange for Medicare beneficiaries, who did not qualify for PHP services, to attend treatment programs that were not legitimate PHP programs so that ATC and ASI could bill Medicare for more than $200 million in medically unnecessary services.

According to the plea agreement, Gumer’s participation in the fraud resulted in $19.3 million in fraudulent billing to the Medicare program. Sentencing for Gumer is scheduled for Jan 19, 2012. Gumer faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

ATC, its management company Medlink Professional Management Group Inc., and the owners and lead manager of ATC, Medlink and ASI, were charged with various health care fraud, money laundering and other offenses in a separate superseding indictment unsealed on Feb. 15, 2011. Two of the three owners and the lead manager, as well as both ATC and Medlink, have pleaded guilty and have admitted to the fraudulent scheme and that more than $200 million in billings were submitted to the Medicare program as a part of the scheme. They are scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 14, 2011, by U.S. District Court Judge James Lawrence King. The trial of the third owner charged in the separate superseding indictment is scheduled to begin on Aug. 15, 2011.

The remaining 17 co-defendants named in the indictment in which Gumer was charged are scheduled to stand trial on Nov. 7, 2011, before U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Seitz.

An indictment is merely an accusation and defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.

Today’s guilty plea was announced by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer of the Southern District of Florida; John V. Gillies, Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI’s Miami field office; and Special Agent-in-Charge Christopher Dennis of the HHS Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), Office of Investigations Miami office.

The criminal case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Jennifer L. Saulino of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section. The case was investigated by the FBI and HHS-OIG and was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.

Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in nine locations have charged more than 1,000 defendants that collectively have billed the Medicare program for more than $2.3 billion. In addition, HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with the HHS-OIG are taking steps to increase accountability and decrease the presence of fraudulent providers.