by Kevin Gale
South Florida Business Journal
Originally published October 15, 2012
Vanja Abreu, former program director at the mental health care company American Therapeutic Corporation (ATC), was sentenced Thursday to 108 months in prison for participating in the $205 million Medicare fraud scheme, a press release from the U.S. Attorney's office said.
Abreu, 49, of Pembroke Pines, worked at ATC centers in Boca Raton and Miami. In addition to her prison term, U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Seitz sentenced Abreu to three years of supervised release following her prison term and ordered her to pay $72.7 million in restitution, jointly and severally with co-defendants.
On June 1, after a seven-week trial, a federal jury in the Southern District of Florida found Abreu, who holds a doctorate degree, guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud.
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Evidence at trial revealed that program directors, including Abreu, helped doctors at ATC sign patient files without reading the files or seeing the patients. Evidence further revealed that Abreu and others would assist the owners of ATC in fabricating doctor notes, therapist notes and other documents to make it falsely appear in ATC’s patient files that patients were qualified for this highly specialized treatment and that the patients were receiving the intensive, individualized treatment PHP is supposed to be.
The entire story is here.
