South Florida health care executive’s convictions upheld

MIAMI — A federal appeals court docket Friday upheld the convictions of a South Florida health-care government on fees of fraud, unlawful kickbacks and cash laundering.

A 3-judge panel of the eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by Philip Esformes, who was discovered responsible in 2019 in what federal prosecutors described on the time because the “largest health care fraud scheme charged by the U.S. Justice Department.”

Esformes, whose companies included nursing properties, was accused of defrauding the Medicare and Medicaid packages, based on Friday’s ruling. That included things like bribing docs to improperly refer sufferers to his services and billing for pointless and costly medical providers.

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After being convicted, Esformes was sentenced to twenty years in jail and ordered to pay about $5.5 million in restitution and forfeit $38.7 million, based on the appeals court docket.

Then-President Donald Trump commuted Esformes’ prison sentence however left intact the convictions and different elements of the sentence.

In the attraction, Esformes raised a collection of points, together with {that a} district decide ought to have dismissed the indictment or disqualified prosecutors due to mishandling of legally privileged supplies.

[ RELATED: Trump commutes 20-year sentence for Miami Beach businessman in massive health care fraud ]

But the appeals court docket rejected the arguments. “Esformes has not even attempted to satisfy his burden of proving prejudice (related to prosecutorial misconduct),” Chief Judge William Pryor wrote in an opinion joined by Judges Jill Pryor and Britt Grant. “The district court applied the correct legal standard and found that the privilege violations did not prejudice Esformes because the privileged materials did not serve as either the basis for the charges against him or the evidence admitted at trial.”