Fort Worth Physician's Assistant Convicted on Health Care Fraud, Faces 240 Years

A Fort Worth physician’s assistant was slammed with a conviction on conspiracy and a dirty dozen charges of health care fraud after hoodwinking Medicare. Ray Anthony Shoulders, age 36, who served at a pain management clinic, was found guilty of shilling sham treatments by injecting patients with amniotic fluid as a pain relief method, an application not approved by the FDA, according to the Department of Justice.

After a brief jury deliberation, less than sixty minutes, the guilty verdict was delivered. Shoulders now stare down the barrel of up to 240 years of federal prison time – that’s two whole decades for each fraudulent count. “Not only did this defendant attempt to scam Medicare out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, he did something far worse by potentially endangering his patients’ health in recommending that they be injected with a drug that had not been approved for that purpose,” U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton spoke of Shoulders' gruesome greed, as she lauded law enforcement and prosecutors for their diligence, per the Department of Justice.

It came to light during trial that Shoulders and his band of conspirators fooled the federal program by submitting bogus claims worth $788,000 and pocketed more than $614,000. The unsanctioned injections, made under the guise of legitimate care, were a ploy to pocket extra cash from Medicare for a treatment that was anything but medicinal, as per FDA warnings.

Not content with merely peddling “Cell Genuity,” a product that Medicare refused to reimburse for both wound care and pain management, Shoulders, in pursuit of more lucrative deceit, schemed to bill for “Fluid Flow,” which he never even bought because it cost more, but continued to inject his cheaper potion into patients while deceitfully billing under the pricier code, the whole operation netted the clinic about $1,200 per cc of the Cell Genuity, tale Dr. Shoulders got a cut amounting to over $200,000.

This fraudulent fountain didn't gush forever, though. After a suspicious flurry of billing, Shoulders slyly suspended the scheme in November 2020, pondering that a sudden spike might alert the feds, but with no consequences catching up to him, he greedily restarted the illegal infusions about 10 months later and kept them up through December 2021. This misconduct resulted in Shoulders' indictment, leading to his recent conviction.

The feds were unyielding in going after Shoulders. The Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, with a helping hand from the FBI's Dallas Field Office, conducted the investigation, leading to the successful prosecution by Assistant U.S. Attorneys P.J. Meitl and Nancy Larson. The final sentence for Shoulders will be decided at a later date.