In a significant crackdown on healthcare fraud, eight individuals are facing charges in the Southern District of Texas as part of the Justice Department's 2024 National Health Care Fraud Enforcement Action. U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani stated, "The enforcement actions, including one against a Houston-area lab that is alleged to have fraudulently billed Medicare hundreds of millions of dollars, represents our coordinated efforts to combat health care fraud and prosecute those who exploit vulnerable individuals for profit."

The accused includes a mix of Houston residents and individuals from other states, all implicated in schemes that aimed to, unjustly enrich themselves at the expense of government programs. These schemes are said to have totaled more than $2.75 billion in false billings. In an aggressive move to recover assets, authorities have seized upwards of $231 million in cash and other valuables. The Justice Department has announced that Sharon Pickrom, Darlene Burbridge, Carmalita Landry, Ijeoma Victoria Ehieze, Michael Ogbebor, Harold Albert "Al" Knowles, Chantal Swart, and Svitlana Meier are among those charged across six separate cases.

Each case reveals different methods of defrauding federal programs specifically designed to aid the elderly and disabled. For instance, Sharon Pickrom is accused of controlling a supposed nonprofit, through which she directed fraudulent prescriptions to Custom Care Pharmacy in exchange for illegal kickbacks, amounting to a $1.7 million scheme. Burbridge and Landry are allegedly tangled in the same web, accused of similar misdeeds involving kickbacks and referrals tied to their own businesses. Meanwhile, Ehieze is charged with fraudulently obtaining over $1.5 million by billing for unprovided or unnecessary home health services, their schemes propped by illegal kickbacks.

Moving to the private sector, Ogbebor is accused of having crafted a "phantom" business after his termination from Stafford Dialysis, going as far as to bill insurance companies for non-existent dialysis treatments, resulting in over $5.1 million in payouts for services never rendered. Further aggravating the scenario, Knowles and Swart are alleged to have bilked Medicare for unnecessary genetic tests to the tune of $359 million, shrouding their kickback arrangements with fabricated contracts.

In the case of Svitlana Meier, the charges veer towards money laundering and operating an illegal money-transmitting venture, emerging from the conduct at her Kim Long Pharmacy, which billed for unprovided medicines and funneled the ill-gotten gains overseas. The possible consequences for these actions are severe, with convictions potentially leading up to a decade behind bars and substantial financial penalties. Investigations were conducted by an array of federal and state agencies. The prosecuted cases are being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kathryn Olson and Grace Murphy of the SDTX, alongside Trial Attorneys from the Department’s Health Care Fraud Strike Force.