Phillip Esformess’ Defrauding Case

Phillip Esformess’ Defrauding Case
Healthcare fraud cases have drawn significant attention despite their concealed forms that make them difficult to identify and prosecute. Stowell et al. (2020) describe the crime as one that constitutes deception and theft. They indicate that it camouflages itself in routine aspects by bailing unrendered services or inflating and misrepresenting services to increase its profit margins. Although the U.S. healthcare system and funding have faced diverse fraud cases, Phillip Esformess emerges as the most notorious one considering the scheme’s magnitude and the lawsuit’s associated outcomes.
Phillip Esformess’ fraud case dominated the media sites due to its size and the extent of violations involved in his defrauding schemes. According to Hiltzik (2020), this case illustrated the scale of healthcare swindling in the United States. The south Florida-based healthcare practitioner and owner of several health facilities faced a lawsuit after being implicated in initiating and running a complex scheme fraud scheme targeting the patients and Medicaid for approximately two decades. His crimes were so sophisticated and expertly executed that he had managed to fleece over 1.3 billion dollars from Medicaid and Medicare for diverse unrendered and misrepresented services in Florida (Hiltzik, 2020). Esformess’ crimes demonstrated the vast losses the federal healthcare schemes suffer from unscrupulous and untrustworthy healthcare providers. It illustrated the importance of cracking down on criminal practices within healthcare, irrespective of their subtle occurrences, to protect the American taxpayers and patients.
The U.S. Justice Department charged Phillip Esformess with money laundering and kickbacks targeting to defraud the nation’s Medicare and Medicaid programs. His crime manifested itself in diverse forms, as presented by the prosecuting team throughout his trial, which lasted for about two months (Hiltzik, 2020). For instance, they charged him with multiple cases of irregularly billing his clients for services not rendered. He also uses several facilities to cycle patients while offering substandard and unnecessary treatment to inflate his profits (Hiltzik, 2020). This scheme also involved improperly billing for all care provided to the patients. The healthcare practitioner bribed regulators to overlook the substandard conditions of his clinics and alert him about surprise inspections in advance and doctors to favorably admit as many patients as possible into his facilities (Hiltzik, 2020). Other charges include his attempt to coerce witnesses to flee to avoid testifying in his case. Esformess also participated in other non-medical-related bribery incidences involving a basketball coach in favor of his son’s recruitment (Hiltzik, 2020). These claims illustrate the corrupt nature of this healthcare provider.
After the completion of the case, the jury punished Phillip Esformess by sentencing him to spend 20 years behind bars (Hiltzik, 2020). They based their ruling on the twenty felony counts presented by the prosecuting team and the magnitude of the defrauding scheme. ...