MARYLAND NEWS

As part of the plea agreement, the former Council Member admitted to stealing $124,450.10 from the Friends of Mel Franklin campaign from 2020 through October 2023, and using those funds to pay for, among other things, personal loans and credit card debt, his personal rent, and personal subscriptions. He also admitted to using those funds for international trips and spending $11,500 on cosmetic procedures for himself and a close friend. Source: Maryland State Prosecutor

Delaware Department of Justice’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) alleges a Maryland resident tried to use a Pennsylvania-licensed nurse’s identity as well as fake education and professional credentials to obtain a Delaware nursing license.

Source: www.wmdt.com and NBC 10 via msn.com

The 11 News Investigates team has reported for more than a year on Medicare fraud involving COVID-19 tests — and now urinary catheters — that's impacting hundreds of Maryland residents and costing taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Source: WBAL-TV 11

Source: US Attorney, Eastern District of Louisiana

A federal grand jury has returned an indictment charging a 50- year-old Glen Burnie man, a 40-year old Westminster man and a 39 year old Cleveland man with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a technical support scheme where victims were made to believe that their computers had been compromised by a virus, or were susceptible to hacking, and payments were needed for computer repair services or software. Source: US Attorney, District of Maryland

The Gift Card Scam Prevention Act of 2024, requires

1. gift cards sold in stores be encased in secure packages to prevent fraudsters from obtaining their numbers; 

2.  those who  sell gift cards online must register them with the Office of the Attorney General's Division of Consumer Protection,  and

3. sellers also must train employees on how to detect gift card fraud. 

Source: CBS News via msn.com and Maryland General Assembly SB 0760

Gold bar fraud has hit once again, defrauding a Bethesda 74-year-old man with memory loss out of $1.1 million. Fraudsters told him to convert his money to gold bars and give them to the fraudsters for safekeeping, according to court records. Source: Washington Post via msn.com

The United States alleged that Patrick Britton-Harr owned and operated Provista Health, LLC as well as multiple other corporate entities that sought to profit from the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic by offering COVID-19 tests to nursing homes as a way to bill Medicare for a wide array of medically unnecessary respiratory pathogen panel (RPP) tests. The complaint alleged that these RPP tests were not medically necessary because the beneficiaries had no symptoms of a respiratory illness and because the tests were for uncommon respiratory pathogens.

Despite a court order prohibiting Britton-Harr from selling his house in Annapolis without approval from the court, he sold the house on September 23, 2023, for $575,000 and dissipated the financial proceeds from the sale. On March 4, 2024, the court granted the United States’ motion to hold Britton-Harr in civil contempt for violating this order and ordered him to deposit $575,000 with the court’s registry.

On July 18th, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland entered default judgments for the United States totaling $26,341,951.38 against Patrick Britton-Harr and multiple laboratory companies owned by him for violations of the False Claims Act.  The court entered these judgments after Britton-Harr and his companies failed to defend against the United States’ allegations.

Source: US Attorney, District of Maryland

A federal judge sentenced two people in Rockville for filing fraudulent Unemployment Insurance claims. The convictions stem from at least 38 fraudulent unemployment claims filed in 2020 in the names of identity theft victims, causing the Maryland Department of Labor to distribute more than $500,000 in benefits on bank debit cards with the defendants' own physical address on the claims.

Source: Maryland Attorney General