Tag Archives: Pennsylvania Attorney General

How To Deal With Fraud Properly

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On Tuesday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about Medicare and Medicaid fraud in Pennsylvania.

The article reports:

The DOJ Fraud Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Pennsylvania Attorney General today announced criminal charges against 19 defendants, including owners and employees of home care companies, for their alleged participation in various fraud schemes involving over four million dollars in claims to Medicare and Medicaid.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General also announced a plea agreement involving the final defendant in a previously-charged 21 defendant case involving over $1.7 million in claims.

Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and senior federal and state officials hold a press conference announcing a significant health care fraud takedown and a new Anti-Fraud Initiative in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

To emphasize the scope of the fraud in California and New York Dr Oz notes, “the number one job in the entire state is personal care services.”

The Press Release from the Department of Justice notes:

Acting Assistant Chief Miriam Glaser Dauermann, Health Care Fraud Trial Attorneys Paul J. Koob and Carla Jordan-Detamore, and Eastern District of Pennsylvania Health Care Fraud Chief Anthony Scicchitano, Deputy Chief Paul Shapiro, and Counsel to the U.S. Attorney Sara Solow, led and coordinated the cases charged in today’s Takedown, together with the FBI, HHS, DEA, IRS, and state and local law enforcement partners. Trial Attorneys Paul J. Koob and Carla Jordan-Detamore, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sara Solow, Paul Shapiro, Angella Middleton, Alisa Shver, Jessica Rice and Megan Curran, and Pennsylvania Deputy Attorneys General Benjamin McKenna, Susann Shore, Jonathan Clymer and Jacob Gordin are prosecuting the cases being announced today.

On April 7, the Department of Justice announced the creation of the Fraud Division. The Fraud Division is laser-focused on investigating and prosecuting those who commit fraud against the American people. The Department’s work to combat fraud supports President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a whole-of-government effort chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.

When people start going to jail for their crimes, the level of crime will slowly decrease.

Cleaning Up Pennsylvania Politics

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On Friday, The Daily Signal reported that a grand jury in Philadelphia has found two Pennsylvania legislators guilty of taking bribes.

The article reports:

A grand jury convened by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams has indicted two Democratic state legislators for accepting bribes in exchange for voting against a voter ID bill, among other legislative actions.

The grand jury findings also represent a withering rejection of the unjustifiable behavior of Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who shut down the three-year investigation that caught state Democratic legislators on video and audio tapes taking bribes. Williams stepped in and successfully prosecuted the case.

One of the bribes taken involved voting against voter identification laws.

The article reports of the fact that the previous investigation had been shut down:

Because Waters, Brown and other legislators involved in the bribery scheme are black, Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane shut down the investigation in March. She claimed that the investigation was “poorly conceived, badly managed and tainted by racism…[and] had targeted African-Americans.” Williams, who also is black, was particularly incensed by this claim, saying that he was “disgusted that the attorney general would bring racism into this case. It’s like pouring gasoline on a fire for no reason, no reason at all.”

Equal rights involves equal justice–it does not involve shielding a person from the consequences of their actions just because of their race.

The article concludes:

As the grand jury concluded, the evidence of bribery was “unusually damning, consisting as it does not only of eyewitness accounts, but of hours of tape recordings, and of detailed admissions by the subjects of the investigation themselves.”

In light of those findings, it is difficult to come up with any reason for Kane’s actions other than a political one. Thankfully, Williams was not deterred from seeking indictments for crimes that strike at the very heart of the legislative process. Kane may not be interested in trying to clean up state politics, but Williams certainly is.

It is good to see someone working to clean up politics. We need people like Attorney General Williams in every state.