Former NFL player sentenced to 16 years in prison for Medicare fraud scheme

A former NFL player was sentenced to prison for over 16 years for a $197 million Medicare fraud scheme.

Joel Rufus French, formerly with the Seattle Seahawks and Green Bay Packers, was convicted in February of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to offer, pay, solicit and receive kickback.

He sold patient information and counterfeit doctors’ orders for unneeded orthotic braces, according to the Justice Department. 

French worked with overseas telemarketing call centers that pressured elderly Americans into providing personal and health insurance information and agreeing to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces, according to the department. The call centers even altered call recordings in certain instances to make it appear that Medicare patients agreed to the braces when they did not.

Sham telemedicine companies were paid kickbacks to obtain signed doctors’ orders from doctors and nurse practitioners who never examined and often never even spoke to the patients, before French then sold the orders to marketers and medical supply companies, which submitted claims to Medicare, the department said.

He also billed Medicare and the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs for orthotic braces through his eight durable medical equipment companies, using straw owners and false documents to hide his connection.

To pay his accomplices who sold him beneficiaries’ personal and insurance information, he laundered cash from a bank in Mississippi.

French was sentenced to 196 months in prison on Thursday for his role in defrauding Medicare and the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs out of nearly $200 million.

He has been ordered to pay roughly $111 million in restitution and to forfeit about $17 million that the government seized from bank accounts and other assets.  

“Fueled by lies, bribes, and overseas telemarketers, this corrupt scheme preyed on senior citizens and disabled veterans to flood the country with unnecessary medical devices — and then billed the taxpayer for it,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “Today’s sentence makes clear that if you target America’s elderly, sick, or vulnerable — and rob America’s purse doing so — you will be targeted and brought to justice.”