Did you read about the many covid-19 scams in circulation over the last year?

There’s good news for consumers and federal agencies who have been scammed. The Justice Department announced May 26 that criminal charges were being brought against 14 defendants for their roles in health care fraud. The schemes exploited the pandemic and falsely billed more than $143 million.

The Center for Program Integrity, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid said it’s taking action against medical providers who are accused of covid-19 related fraud, also. CPI is charging providers with defraud

CPI is charging providers with defrauding Medicare. They are accused of targeting Medicare beneficiaries in senior living facilities and other locations.

They allegedly offered victims covid-19 tests to obtain their personal identity information and then submitted claims to Medicare for unrelated, medically unnecessary, and expensive laboratory tests.

Many tests, such as screenings for genetic cancer markers, were entirely unrelated to the services rendered.

To add insult to injury, in many cases the actual test results were not provided to the beneficiaries in a timely fashion or were not reliable.

By not providing accurate covid test results they risked spreading the disease.

Even worse, when the genetic, allergy or respiratory pathogen testing was conducted, the results were not provided to the patients or their doctors.

Fortunately, none of the charges above were brought against businesses or medical providers in South Carolina. Unfortunately, that does not mean fraud has not happened in our state or in Lexington County.

If you believe your insurance or Medicare/Medicaid coverage was billed fraudulently, please report it to the National Center for Disaster Fraud at (866) 720-5721 or file a complaint at: www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/webform/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form. Complaints will be referred to law enforcement or regulatory agencies.