Philip Esformes attends the 15th Annual Harold & Carole Pump Foundation Gala at Hyatt Regency Century Plaza on August 7, 2015 in Century City, California.
Tiffany Rose | Getty Images
Philip Esformes pleaded guilty to health care fraud on Thursday, ending the Justice Department’s years-long effort to prosecute the convicted fraudster after then-President Donald Trump commuted his 20-year prison sentence.
According to federal court filings in Miami, Florida, Esformes pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. The DOJ agreed to drop five additional charges against him.
As part of his plea agreement, Esformes was sentenced to prison, meaning he will not serve any additional time in prison. The Florida nursing home owner had already spent more than four years behind bars from his arrest in July 2016 until the end of 2020, when his original sentence was commuted.
He faces no further restrictions or fines.
Trump commuted Esformes’ sentence in his final days in the White House, during which he granted dozens of other executive clemency requests. The commutation overturned Esformes’ prison sentence, but not his 2019 conviction on 20 felony counts.
Those allegations related to what the Justice Department described as the largest health care fraud scheme it had ever prosecuted.
Prosecutors said Esformes bribed doctors to place patients in his nursing homes, where they often received inadequate care or received unnecessary services that were then billed to Medicare and Medicaid.
According to the Justice Department, Esformes personally took in more than $37 million from the year-long scheme and spent that money on extravagances such as luxury cars and a $360,000 watch.
A federal prosecutor described Esformes at the time of his original sentencing as “a man driven by almost limitless greed.”
The jury found him guilty on 20 counts at trial, but deadlocked on six other counts. A judge sentenced Esformes to 20 years in prison. Five months after Trump commuted Esformes’ sentence, the Justice Department said it would seek to retry him on the remaining six counts.
The unusual move led to accusations that the prosecutor’s decision was based on anger over the commutation rather than serving justice.
Source link
2024-02-22 16:50:32
www.cnbc.com