Federal Court Upholds $46.7 Million Medicare PHPs Fraud Conviction

Case: In 2015, the former president of a Texas hospital was ordered to pay restitution of $46,753,180 and spend 45 years in prison after being found guilty of 10 counts for his role in a $158 million Medicare Partial Hospitalization Programs (PHPs) fraud scheme. Now age 76, the president made a bid to get the convictions set aside but the Texas federal court said no dice and let the convictions stand.

Significance: The laundry list of defenses that the court rejected included, among others:

• Defense counsel was ineffective because it didn’t research federal law on PHPs or object to certain evidence;
• The evidence supporting his convictions was insufficient;
• The prosecution’s evidence gathering wasn’t an illegal search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment;
• He wasn’t denied his Fifth Amendment due process rights;
• The prosecution’s failure to call a certain witness didn’t deny him of his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses against him; and
• The government didn’t commit entrapment.

United States v. Gibson, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 179712