Florida sees many VA scams

#Middlebury #Veterans

What’s going on in Florida? It appears more criminals are operating there than in other areas of the country.

One criminal near Tampa worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs as a transportation assistant who awarded contracts to vendors to give rides to VA clinic patients. Vendors had to pay kickbacks to him to be awarded contracts.

Eventually the criminal started up two transportation companies of his own, registering them in the names of his wife and daughter to hide his involvement. Invoices were submitted, and they were paid to the tune of $305,000 over the course of 17 months.

When the whole scheme started coming down around their heads, they all lied and then got tangled up in those lies. Wife and daughter claimed they ran the two companies, yet the criminal was the one who registered the vehicles and arranged for insurance. Later, the criminal said his wife and daughter had seized control of the companies without his knowledge and were blackmailing him into giving them transportation contracts and assignments. All three pleaded guilty.

Also on Florida’s west coast, a criminal operated a telemarketing scam where employees sold medical testing to patients and then turned those into prescriptions that looked like exams had been done via telemedicine. Signatures on the fake prescriptions were obtained from doctors in exchange for bribes. The prescriptions, submitted to the VA, netted the criminal over $3 million, and he’s been sentenced to four years in the federal penitentiary.

Then, on the east coast of Florida, a former VA employee was nabbed for threatening to kill another employee and that employee’s family. Not too bright, leaving threatening messages on somebody’s cellphone … more than once. This fool could get a year in the federal pen and a $100,000 fine.

So, is it the sun that does it in Florida?

© 2020 King Features Synd., Inc.