Jodi Leonore Latson: Quite the Alleged Medicare Defrauder
If you're going to defraud the U.S. government, go big. It's not like they're going to miss a stray $62 million or so.
Houston makes the fraud lineup.
Thus was the thinking of Houstonian Jodi Leonore Latson, 45, who -- unfortunately for her -- ended up as one of the bigger fish caught in a nationwide Medicare crackdown announced today.
The U.S. Attorney's Office says Latson gathered up names of potential Medicare beneficiaries, set up a boiler-room operation to recruit them via telemarketing calls, and then sold the info "to 100 different home health care agencies in exchange for illegal payments."
The 100 companies submitted bogus Medicare reimbursement requests using the info totaling $61.5 million.
Another Houstonian was also netted in the operation, but he was a two-bit $700,000 player, so therefore brought only shame on our city's big-time swindler rep.
The operation resulted in the arrest of 91 people responsible for $295 million in fraudulent billing, the Department of Justice announced. The most well-represented area of the country was the Medicare promised land of South Florida.
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