Justia White Collar Crime Opinion Summaries

Defendant, once a practicing psychiatrist, defrauded Medicare by receiving funds he was not entitled to receive and then fled the country to live as a fugitive in the Philippines. There, defendant created the website www.liver4you.org, fraudulently promising to provide critically ill patients liver or kidney transplants for certain sums of money. Defendant was subsequently convicted of one count of health care fraud and five counts of wire fraud. Defendant appealed, arguing that the district court committed four procedural errors in calculating defendant's offense level and imposed a substantively unreasonable sentence. The government argued that the court should not consider the four procedural errors because at sentencing the district court stated it would impose "the same sentence" even without some of the alleged errors. The court rejected this contention and emphasized that such predictions were only rarely appropriate. Defendant argued that his website was not mass-marketing pursuant to U.S.S.G. 2B1.1(b)(2)(A)(ii) because he did not initiate contact with his victims where they found his website, which was publicly available online, and emailed him at an address listed on the website. The court rejected defendant's distinction and held that he committed fraud by using the internet to solicit a large number of persons to buy his organ transplant services. Therefore, the court held that the enhancement applied even if defendant did not use the most active marketing method possible. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

Defendant pled guilty to one count of identity theft as part of a plea agreement where defendant had treated hundreds of patients while falsely representing that he was a licensed physician. In determining defendant's sentence, the district court increased his sentence under U.S.S.G. 3A1.1(b)(1) because some of his patients were children with serious mental health conditions. On appeal, defendant disputed the increase in his offense level, contending that section 3A1.1(b)(1)'s 2-level adjustment for vulnerable victims applied only to victims of defendant's offense of conviction, who in this case would include only those victims who suffered financial loss. The court disagreed and held that the adjustment applied not only to victims of the offense of conviction, but also to victims of defendant's relevant conduct. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

Defendant, pro se, was convicted of 129 counts of unlawfully dispensing certain controlled substances by means of written prescriptions and sentenced to concurrent terms of imprisonment totaling 97 months and fined $200,000. At issue was whether the district court effectively denied defendant his right to testify. The court held that in these circumstances, where the district court initiated a colloquy with defendant regarding his right to testify, the district court was duty-bound to correct a pro se defendant's obvious misunderstanding of his right to testify. The court also held that the error was not harmless and therefore, the court vacated defendant's convictions and remanded.

Martin J. Bradley III and his father, Martin J. Bradley, Jr. (collectively, the Bradleys), owned Bio-Med Plus, Inc. (Bio-Med), a Miami-based pharmaceutical wholesaler that purchased and sold blood-derivatives. This case stemmed from multiple schemes to defraud the Florida and California Medicaid programs by causing them to pay for blood-derivative medications more than once. The Government chose to prosecute the schemes and a grand jury indicted eight individuals, including Albert L. Tellechea, and two companies, Bio-Med, and Interland Associates, Inc. The Bradleys, Bio-Med, and Tellechea subsequently appealed their convictions and raised several issues on appeal. The court affirmed the Bradleys', Bio-Med's, and Tellechea's convictions, and Bradley III's and Bio-Med's sentences. The court vacated Bradley, Jr.'s sentences on Counts I and 54 and Tellechea's sentence on Count 3, and remanded those counts for resentencing. The court reversed the district court's October 4, 2006 order appointing the receiver and monitor, and its supplemental receivership order of May 17, 2007. The court finally held that, as soon as circumstances allowed, the receivership should be brought to an immediate close.

Appellant, a primary care physician who served Medicaid patients in the District of Columbia, appealed his convictions for health care fraud and for making false statements relating to health care matters, as well as his 53 month prison sentence. At issue was whether the district court committed evidentiary errors and improperly refused to give the good faith instruction appellant requested. Also at issue was whether appellant's sentence was procedurally unreasonable. The court found no merit in appellant's assertions of trial errors and affirmed the judgment of conviction. The court held, however, that because the district gave an inadequate explanation for its above-Guidelines sentence and because this procedural defect amounted to plain error, the court vacated the sentence and remanded for further proceedings.

The doctor was convicted of conspiring to defraud the government and Medicare fraud (42 U.S.C. 1320a) for accepting a salary from the hospital in return for referring patients and sentenced to 72 months imprisonment followed by two years of supervision and to payment of $497,204 in restitution. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The court did not err in refusing to admit substantive reports from meetings or the minutes of the meetings, although it allowed the government to use the minutes to establish the doctor's non-attendance at meetings. The doctor was allowed to argue that certain reports concerning his services were made and tendered during the meetings. Upholding a jury instruction, the court stated that nothing in the Medicare fraud statute implies that only the primary motivation for remuneration is to be considered and that the conviction is valid even if the payments were, in part, compensation for services. Findings concerning the level of loss supported the sentence.