The owner of two durable medical equipment companies in Texas pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to pay healthcare kickbacks for his role in a Medicare fraud scheme.
Between at least June 2016 and February 2019, Simon Orobor, 60, of Houston owned and operated Devotion Medical Supply and Durable Medical Supply, which provided durable medical equipment such as knee and wrist braces, according to a Nov. 16 news release from the Justice Department. Through an entity called Digital Interventions, Mr. Orobor obtained access to thousands of Medicare beneficiaries by paying weekly kickbacks in exchange for signed physicians' orders for braces. Mr. Orobor and an unnamed co-conspirator hid the nature of these kickbacks by designating the payments as marketing expenses, entering into sham contracts and generating fraudulent invoices.
In total, Mr Orobor used the kickbacks to submit more than $20 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare and received reimbursement totaling more than $11 million, according to the release.