Begum co-owned and operated Empirical Home Health Care Inc.
AB Wire
WASHINGTON, DC: The owner of a greater Detroit-area home health care agency, Rahmat Begum, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to fraud and money laundering charges in connection with her role in a $2.6 million home health care scheme.
Begum, 49, of Farmington Hills, Michigan, and of Pakistani origin, pleaded guilty yesterday – during the second day of her trial – to all charges in a six-count indictment, including one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of making false statements relating to health care matters, one count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute and three counts of money laundering.
Begum co-owned and operated Empirical Home Health Care Inc., an Oakland County, Michigan, home health agency that purported to provide in-home health care services to Medicare beneficiaries.
A sentencing hearing is scheduled for August 18, 2015, before U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman of the Eastern District of Michigan.
According to admissions made as part of her guilty plea, Begum conspired to submit falsified claims to Medicare where the claims were based upon referrals obtained through illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters and physicians.
Begum also admitted to conspiring to pay illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters and physicians and to making a false statement to Medicare pledging not to pay kickbacks, when in fact she was paying them. She also admitted to laundering the proceeds of the wire fraud conspiracy.
Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, now operating in nine cities across the country, has charged nearly 2,100 defendants who have collectively billed the Medicare program for more than $6.5 billion.