Coral Springs man charged in $73 million Medicare fraud scheme, investigators say
A Coral Springs man has been charged in a sweeping multi-million-dollar Medicare fraud takedown, Department of Justice officials announced Tuesday.
Investigators say that from February until August 2023, Jason Kashou and his alleged co-conspirators fraudulently billed the government and received kickbacks for over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits that were shipped to patients who never requested them, according to a June 23 news release from the United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of Texas.
Kashou, 40, a Coral Springs resident and owner of MCM Hustle, was paid $20,000 to provide patients’ names, Medicare identification numbers, and other identifying information to lab companies, investigators say.
The scheme resulted in $73 million in fraudulent claims billed to Medicare, according to court documents.
In 2021, Kashou faced similar healthcare kickback-related charges in the Southern District of Florida.
According to his plea agreement, Kashou’s company First Choice bought healthcare beneficiary information from a call center in India, lied to pharmacies about how he obtained the information and received payments from those pharmacies for every patient whose purchases were covered by Medicare or Medicaid.
Kashou was sentenced to three years of supervised release in the case. However, after being charged with possession of cocaine in June 2024, he served the remaining two months of his sentence in prison.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and the Department of War’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service investigated the alleged $73 million scheme.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Douglas B. Brasher of the Northern District of Texas. A trial date has not been set as of June 24.
