Owner Of Fraudulent Telemarketing Company Sentenced To 4 Years

LAND O' LAKES, FL — A Land O' Lakes man has been sentenced to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to health care fraud.

Chief U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday sentenced Samuel Friedman, 45, at the U.S. Courthouse in Tampa. Friedman was also ordered to forfeit his interests in real property as well as a bank account containing nearly $475,000 found to be the proceeds of the health care fraud. Additionally, he was ordered to pay $3.42 million in restitution.

Friedman pleaded guilty on June 16.

According to court documents, Friedman owned and operated a telemarketing operation known as SKF Enterprises LLC, which marketed durable medical equipment and cancer genetic testing to the Medicare-age population.

SKF’s call center employees were trained to follow a script designed to upsell DME and CGx testing to Medicare beneficiaries. SKF then packaged this information into the format of a prescription for doctors’ approval under the guise of “telemedicine,” but no proper telemedicine occurred.

Instead, doctors’ signatures were secured in exchange for bribes and kickbacks.

During the scheme, Friedman bribed numerous doctors through fraudulent “telemedicine” companies to sign and to approve thousands of DME and CGx-testing orders, regardless of medical necessity. Once signed by doctors, Friedman sold the prescriptions to client-conspirators for submission to Medicare and the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The conspirators attempted to conceal their illegal kickback relationships using sham marketing agreements. For these illegal sales, conspirators paid SKF more than $3.4 million.

This case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Internal Revenue Service.