{"id":27400,"date":"2016-10-18T13:28:08","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T20:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=27400"},"modified":"2016-10-18T13:28:08","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T20:28:08","slug":"union-member-is-facing-up-to-400-years-in-prison-for-fraudulently-billing-for-chiropractor-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=27400","title":{"rendered":"Union Member is Facing up to 400 Years in Prison for Fraudulently Billing for Chiropractor Services"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"Courtroom\"A member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union or ILWU, Local 13, who was convicted for causing two medical clinics to bill the union\u2019s health care plan for chiropractic services that were not provided or were not medically necessary, is set to be sentenced in January.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Gomez<\/strong> is facing up to 20 years in prison on each of the 20 counts of conviction, officials announced Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gomez, 52, of San Pedro, was convicted late Friday by a jury in Los Angeles of 20 counts of mail fraud. <\/span><\/p>\n

After the verdicts were returned, federal Judge R. Gary Klausner<\/strong> ordered Gomez taken into custody.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ILWU represents dockworkers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Members of the union receive benefits, including health care benefits, through the ILWU-Pacific Maritime Association Welfare Plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis case is particularly egregious since defendant Gomez was a longshoreman and a longtime member of the ILWU who was operating a healthcare clinic in close proximity to the port – all ingredients for the perfect recipe to defraud the ILWU-PMA health insurance plan,\u201d said Deirdre Fike, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDavid Gomez conspired with others to victimize the union health plan and its participants by billing for services not rendered, services not medically necessary and services that did not address specific conditions of patients. In an age of rising medical care costs the Office of Inspector General will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to combat fraud involving union affiliated health and welfare plans,\u201d said Special Agent in-Charge Abel Salinas of the Los Angeles Regional Office, U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"VeteransAccording to the evidence, Gomez and his co-defendant, Sergio Amador<\/strong>, opened a clinic in Long Beach in 2009 that operated under the name Port Medical and provided medical and chiropractic care. <\/span><\/p>\n

The next year, they opened a second clinic operating under the same name in San Pedro.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gomez and Amador also created medical management companies that they used to receive funds generated by the medical clinics, which they then used to pay themselves and to pay incentives to ILWU members to use, and encourage other ILWU members, to use the Port Medical clinics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These incentives were often paid as \u201csponsorships\u201d of basketball or softball teams, with the understanding that the ILWU member receiving the \u201csponsorship\u201d would visit, and encourage other team members to visit, Port Medical.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the evidence, Port Medical chart entries were falsified to indicate that ILWU members and their dependents, including children as young as 5 years old, had received repeated chiropractic services, including multiple sessions of massage therapy, that they had not, according to authorities. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To accomplish this, ILWU members were asked to sign their names on multiple sign-in stickers that were used to create the fabricated chart entries, or their signatures on stickers affixed to the chart entries were simply forged.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other evidence related to instructions provided to Port Medical massage therapists on how to craft chart entries to maximize billing and make services appear to be medically necessary, a requirement for them to be covered by the ILWU-PMA Welfare Plan, according to officials. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Included were instructions to massage therapists never to write that a patient had indicated \u201cno complaints,\u201d and to make sure not to copy or write chart entries \u201cexactly the same each time, change things up a little!!!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis defendant stole money intended to protect and promote the health of unionized dockworkers,\u201d said United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker. \u201cIn taking these funds from the Welfare Plan for his personal profit, this defendant undermined the continuing efforts of the ILWU and PMA to provide comprehensive medical benefits to his fellow union members and their families.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the life of the fraudulent scheme, the medical management companies controlled by Amador and Gomez received at least $3 million that derived from funds paid by the Welfare Plan to Port Medical.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a major scheme to defraud a Southern California dockworkers medical plan that provides crucial services to thousands of hardworking men and women,\u201d said Crisanta Johnson, Regional Director for the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits and Security Administration.<\/strong> \u201cIt’s unconscionable that the defendants would game such a sacred program to line their own pockets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Amador pled guilty earlier this year to 20 counts of mail fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 1.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES A member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union or ILWU, Local 13, who was convicted for causing two medical clinics to bill the union\u2019s health care plan for chiropractic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home-main-slider","category-u-s-department-of-justice"],"yoast_head":"\nUnion Member Facing Up to 400 Years for Scamming Medical Plan<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A union member who was convicted of bilking for chiropractor services not needed or not provided is facing 400 years when he is sentenced in January.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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