A River Hills man who co-owned a Milwaukee clinical laboratory has been sentenced to 21 months in prison after taking part in a years-long health care kickback scheme.
Justin Drew Hanson was also ordered to pay more than $2.2 million in restitution to Medicaid and Medicare, along with a $75,000 fine, according to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office.
Hanson and
Mohammed Kazim Ali were co-owners of Milwaukee-based
Noah Associates, which has been shut down.
Beginning in 2017, Ali and Hanson engaged in a three-year-long scheme to pay kickbacks to the owner of a Milwaukee substance use treatment clinic in exchange for referrals of Medicaid and Medicare patients for urine drug testing performed by Noah Associates.
Ali and Hanson paid over $400,000 in kickbacks to obtain the tests. The tests were not ordered by any physician and were not medically necessary for the treatment of patients. As a result of the scheme, Medicaid and Medicare paid Noah Associates over $2.2 million for the unnecessary tests. Hanson personally received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Noah Associates during the scheme.
It is illegal for anyone to offer, pay, solicit or receive money in exchange for referring Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to providers that participate in the program, or to arrange for certain services that may be paid for in part or whole by Medicare of Medicaid. Such payments are known as “kickbacks.”
Ali was
sentenced to 15 months in jail at the start of the year for his part in the health care kickback scheme.
Last spring, Ali and Hanson’s co-conspirator in the health care kickback scheme plead guilty to one count of conspiracy defraud the United States
. Gregory Owens, the owner and operator of the alcohol and drug abuse treatment clinic
GRO Family Services, was
sentenced to between 30 and 37 months in jail.
