Two men were found guilty in a multi-million dollar, multi-state Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme that involved a Spring Hill lab.
Owner and chief executive officer of Spring Hill’s now-defunct Crestar Labs, Fadel Alshalabi, has been found guilty of conspiracy to violate and violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute and money laundering following a seven-week federal trial, according to Thomas J. Jaworski, acting United States attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee.
As previously reported, 57-year-old Alshalabi, of Waxhaw, North Carolina, was among eight people who were arrested in 2021, for their involvement in a fraudulent $86 million Medicare billing scheme centered on the self-described "diagnostic reference laboratory."
30-year-old Samuel Harris, the owner of Flojo Recruiting d/b/a Secure Health, a Utah-based marketing company that contracted with Crestar Labs, was also found guilty of conspiracy to violate and violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute.
In 2023, a Chicago doctor was also found guilty of the same crime for his role in the scheme which was accomplished by targeting seniors in door-to-door marketing, at senior citizen fairs and nursing homes, and administering mouth swab tests in exchange for kickbacks paid by Crestar Labs, all with the knowledge of the co-conspirators that the tests were fraudulent. Ultimately, Medicare and Medicaid billed were billed for more than $100 million in testing acquired through the illegal kickbacks.
"Decisions to order health care items and services should not be coerced and influenced by the payment of illegal kickbacks. These defendants' criminal scheme to pay and receive kick-backs corrupts our country's healthcare system and costs the taxpayers millions of dollars that should go to pay for legitimate health care services for the elderly and poor," acting U.S. Attorney Thomas J. Jaworski said in a news release.
Alshalabi and Harris will be sentenced in March 2025. They each face up to 10 years in prison on the counts of violating the Anti-Kickback Statute and up to 5 years for conspiracy to violate the statute. Alshalabi also faces up to 10 years in prison for money laundering. Both were acquitted on separate counts of health care fraud.