MIAMI, Fla.– A 48-year-old Delray Beach doctor was sentenced Monday to 20 years in jail for interesting in a multi-year fraud including sober houses in the biggest addiction fraud treatment case ever charged by the Department of Justice.
Michael J. Ligotti was the medical director or licensing doctor for more 50 sober houses, substance abuse treatment centers and clinical screening labs in the Palm Beach County location. Court documents reveal he billed insurance business more than $746 million and paid himself roughly $127 million for deceptive urine drug tests and addiction treatments.
This case was brought as part of the Department of Justice’s Sober Residences Effort.
” For almost a years, Michael Ligotti made use of susceptible patients looking for addiction treatment, a guilty abuse of trust by a doctor,” Assistant Attorney General Of The United States Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Crook Department, stated in a press release. “This accused will now serve numerous years in federal jail for utilizing his medical license to license deceptive tests and treatments for addicted patients at treatment centers and sober houses throughout South Florida.’
On Oct. 4, Ligotti accepted a plea contract of conspiracy to devote health care and wirefraud It was multi-year plan to costs health care advantage programs for deceptive tests and treatments for susceptible patients looking for treatment for drug and/or (*20 *)addiction
In Miami, Southern District of Florida Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz, II likewise purchased restitution to be identified and to surrender his medical license.
From 2011 to 2020, district attorneys stated Ligotti billed patients’ personal health insurance plans for “duplicative, medically unneeded, and costly urine drug tests, blood tests and other addiction treatments.”
In the plan, centers regularly sent out patients’ urine specimens to clinical screening labs and health care advantage programs were for unneeded urine drug tests, consisting of some costing thousands of dollars for a single test.
The treatment centers needed patients to frequently go to Ligotti’s center, Entire Health LLC, for extra treatment and screening, or his staff to come to their treatment centers to conduct tests and treatment there.
” The victims are genuine, and the losses are tremendous,” Performing Unique Representative in Charge Chad Yarbrough of the FBI Miami Field Workplace stated. “Rather of guaranteeing the appropriate treatment of the susceptible patients under his care in over 50 sober houses, Michael J. Ligotti gamed the system for millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.
” The private investigators who deciphered this rip-off are to be applauded for their diligence and dedication. The FBI and our partners will continue to pursue those people who use our health care system to victim on the susceptible and take from the taxpayers.”
Examining the cases were the FBI Miami Department Palm Beach Local Firm, Drug Enforcement Administration West Palm Beach Diversion Group; Internal Revenue Service Lawbreaker Examination Miami Field Workplace; Amtrak Workplace of Inspector General; Department of Labor Worker Retirement Earnings Security Act; Florida Department of Financial Solutions, Department of Investigative and Forensic Solutions; and Palm Beach County Workplace of the State Lawyer examined the case.
The DOJ’s Sober Residences Effort was started in September 2020 to prosecute accuseds who make use of susceptible patients looking for treatment for drug and/or (*20 *)addiction The effort has actually resulted in charges and guilty pleas or convictions including 28 criminal accuseds in 2 judicial districts in connection with over $1 billion in declared incorrect billings.
Ligotti got a Bachelor of Arts degree from Florida Atlantic and a medical degree from Nova-Southeastern College of Osteopathic Medicine.