Cuban national sought in connection to a nearly $3 million healthcare fraud was caught after two years on the run
Rodriguez had been wanted by US authorities since 2013, when his company, G.R. Services Equipment and Supplies Inc., filed for reimbursements on $2,579,695 worth of equipment and procedures that were "not prescribed by doctors and not provided to beneficiaries," the FBI said.
Federal law enforcement had seized $243,339 from G.R. Services, but Rodriguez himself remained out of their reach in Cuba, the FBI said.
The FBI indictment states that "G.R. Services sought thousands of dollars in reimbursement for wound therapy electrical pumps and sterile collagen dressings purportedly provided in 2013 to Medicare beneficiaries who had died in 2010."
This case is part of a Medicare Fraud Strike Force, which broke the record for the largest medicare-fraud bust in June, in which 73 other Miami practitioners were also charged, the FBI said.
"Health care fraud is a crime that hurts all of us, and each dollar taken from programs that help the sick and the suffering is one dollar too many," FBI Director James Comey said of the June bust.
The Medicare Fraud Strike Force has charged over 2,300 defendants for more than $7 billion in suspected fraudulent charges since its establishment in 2007, the FBI said.