Man Pleads Guilty To Committing Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Against Medicare By Selling Bogus Orders For Medical Equipment

 

 Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that MATTHEW TAYLOR WITKOWSKI pled guilty to a one-count criminal Information charging him with conspiracy to commit health care fraud.  WITKOWSKI is scheduled to be sentenced on April 20, 2023, before United States District Judge Denise Cote.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Medicare is a valuable, taxpayer-funded program designed to provide affordable health care to people over 65 or with disabilities, not to enrich those who would seek to benefit themselves through fraud.  Matthew Taylor Witkowski admitted to illegally selling orders for durable medical equipment, which were used to bilk Medicare out of millions of dollars.”

According to the Information, statements made in court, and other publicly filed documents in this case:

From at least August 2019 through the date of his arrest in July 2022, WITKOWSKI and a co-conspirator (“CC-1”) engaged in a scheme to defraud Medicare by illegally obtaining and selling fraudulent written orders for goods and services paid for by Medicare, including for durable medical equipment (“DME”).  Using a call center that he owned and operated in the Dominican Republic, WITKOWSKI illegally generated and purchased fraudulent written orders for DME and then sold those fraudulent orders to pharmacies and DME suppliers, including in New York City.  Those pharmacies and DME suppliers then used those fraudulent orders as the basis for more than $8 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare.  Many of these fraudulent orders used names and personal health information of actual Medicare beneficiaries, without the beneficiaries’ authorization or prior knowledge.  Many of these fraudulent orders also contained professional information of doctors and other health-care providers enrolled in the Medicare program, as well as the purported electronic signatures of these providers, which were falsified and created without the authorization or knowledge of these providers.

During the course of the scheme, WITKOWSKI took more than $4 million in illegal kickbacks from DME suppliers, who made these payments to True Prospects Marketing, Inc., a company controlled by Witkowski and CC-1, and to Sales Drive Marketing LLC, a company owned and controlled by WITKOWSKI.

WITKOWSKI, 37, an American citizen who has been residing in the Dominican Republic, and is currently on bail in Florida, pled guilty today to a single count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud.  That charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. 

The maximum potential sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the sentencing judge.

Mr. Williams praised the investigative work of the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.