The owner of a Livonia, Mich.-based home health care company was sentenced to nine years in prison for orchestrating a nearly $2.8 million fraud scheme.
Yogesh Pancholi of Northville, Mich., was excluded from billing Medicare, according to a Jan. 30 Justice Department news release. In spite of that, he used the names, signatures and personal identifying information of others to conceal his ownership of Shring Home Care Inc.
Over a two-month period, Mr. Pancholi and his co-conspirators billed and were paid almost $2.8 million by Medicare for services that were never provided, according to the release. He then transferred the funds through bank accounts belonging to shell corporations and eventually to his bank account in India.
He was convicted in September of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud, two substantive counts of health care fraud, two counts of money laundering, two counts of aggravated identity theft and one count of witness tampering.