Assisted living operators caught in $63 million mental health billing scam

A pair of Miami-area assisted living facility owners are the latest to be caught in an alleged $63 billion Medicare and Medicaid billing scam, federal authorities say. Ivon Perez and Raymond Rivero admitted their guilt separately in agreements filed late last week with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

The pair copped to counts of conspiracy to solicit and receive cash kickbacks, officials said. Perez and Rivero were the owners of Miami-based God Is First ALF, and Kayleen and Denis Care Corp, respectively, and were cogs in a bigger, fraudulent machine operated by the now defunct Health Care Solutions Network Inc., authorities explained.

HCSN purported to operate mental health clinics that billed the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for $63 million from 2004 to 2011. Often times, billed services were not needed, or not provided, prosecutors said in a statement.

“HCSN obtained those beneficiaries by paying kickbacks to owners and operators of ALFs or by otherwise recruiting them from ALFs and nursing homes,” authorities explained.