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A nursing assistant residing in Pompano Beach was sentenced this Tuesday to nine years in federal prison for orchestrating a $11.4 million Medicare fraud scheme by sending unnecessary orthopedic braces to hundreds of beneficiaries nationwide.
Christian "Chris" Cruz -45 years old and whose nationality of origin has not been disclosed- operated Brace Yourself MD LLC, a medical equipment supplier based in Fort Lauderdale, through which he submitted millions of dollars in false claims to the federal health program.
In addition to the nine years in prison, the judge ordered Cruz to serve two years of supervised release, along with the payment of $3,712,345.70 in restitution and $724,871 in forfeiture of assets.
The scheme operated through the payment of bribes and illegal commissions to marketing and telemedicine companies in order to obtain medical orders signed by doctors, which were then used to justify fraudulent claims to Medicare.
Many of the beneficiaries who received the braces neither requested them nor needed them, according to court documents presented during the trial.
Cruz also lied to Medicare by declaring himself the sole owner of the company, hiding the involvement of his co-conspirator, Jorge Luis Almansa, 53 years old -also from Pompano Beach- who is a convicted felon whose association would have prevented the company from enrolling in the program.
Almansa has been formally charged but remains a fugitive.
To hide illicit gains, Cruz withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from his personal account in amounts just below the bank reporting threshold of $10,000, at different branches in South Florida on consecutive days, a practice known as financial structuring.
After a six-day trial held in January, a federal jury found him guilty of nine charges, including conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, four counts of health care fraud, conspiracy to defraud the federal government, and three counts of structuring.
"This was a deliberate scheme of healthcare fraud built on lies, bribes, and the abuse of the Medicare system," declared federal prosecutor Jason A. Reding Quiñones.
"If you steal from Medicare, you will go to prison and be required to pay that money back," he added.
The case was investigated by the FBI and the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The conviction comes days after the Department of Justice announced on April 7th the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division, led by Deputy Attorney General Colin M. McDonald, with the mandate to pursue those who steal or misuse taxpayer funds.
The initiative is part of President Trump's task force to eliminate fraud, chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance. The South Florida, and particularly Broward County, is one of the national epicenters of Medicare fraud through medical equipment, with a series of recent convictions for similar schemes totaling tens of millions of dollars in harm to the public treasury.
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