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A $150,000 healthcare fraud in Virginia and Tennessee earned a Miami man prison time

Miami Herald - 10/4/2021

A Miami man working for a Fort Lauderdale drug-testing laboratory got caught paying kickbacks to bring in business from opioid-addiction treatment centers in Virginia and Tennessee.

Because those tests were paid for by Medicare and Medicaid, that counts as healthcare fraud and will cost Michael Olshavsky five months of freedom. The 51-year-old, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, will spend that time in either the federal prison in Miami or the one in Wildwood.

The fraud also will cost Olshavsky $150,000 in restitution to Medicare, Virginia Medicaid and TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicare plan. That’s on top of the $66,000 civil money penalty for Olshavsky.

Olshavsky was sentenced in Abingdon, Virginia, federal court on Sept. 22. At the other end of the kickbacks, Bristol, Tennessee, resident John Paul Linke got three months’ probation, $40,000 restitution to the same government entities and a $16,000 in civil money penalty.

In 2015 and 2016, Linke worked for an opioid substance-abuse treatment company referred to in the indictment as “WRC” which has locations in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Olshavsky worked for a Fort Lauderdale lab that did drug testing.

“In exchange for being paid $5,000 per month, Linke arranged for the clinic to send urine drug-screen samples to the laboratory in Florida where Olshavsky worked,” the Department of Justice said. “These payments were disguised as commissions paid to Linke as an “independent sales representative” for Olshavsky’s company, Encore Holdings LLC.”

South Florida still No 1 in healthcare fraud. Ripoffs cost Medicare billions a year

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