TRENTON
- Acting Attorney General Anne Milgram and
Division of Criminal Justice Director Gregory
A. Paw announced that the owners of two
Middlesex County residential health care
facilities have been sentenced for violating
the Medicaid kickback statute. The Medicaid
program prohibits the paying of cash or
offering of anything of value to a Medicaid
provider in exchange for directing business
to providers, such as pharmacies.
According
to Insurance Fraud Prosecutor Greta Gooden
Brown, Edward Acquaye, 55, of New Brunswick,
was sentenced on Sept. 1 by Superior Court
Judge Frederick P. DeVesa in Middlesex County
to three years of unsupervised probation
conditioned on him paying restitution of
$1,500 and a civil fine of $1,000. The judge
also sentenced Edward Sigle, 80, of Monroe,
to three years of unsupervised probation
conditioned on him paying $2,000 in restitution
and a $1,000 civil fine. The sentences were
pursuant to the defendants’ guilty
pleas to separate Middlesex County indictments
filed on Jan. 31.
Acquaye
pleaded guilty on June 30 before Judge DeVesa
in Middlesex County. Acquaye, the owner
and operator of Lincoln Rest Home in Jamesburg,
admitted at the plea hearing that between
Nov. 20, 2001 and Feb. 20, 2002, he accepted
approximately $4,800 in kickbacks from Michael
Stavitski. Acquaye admitted that he agreed,
in return, that all prescriptions for Medicaid
recipients residing at Lincoln Rest Home
would be filled exclusively at the pharmacy
Stavitski formerly owned, Belmar Hometown
Pharmacy.
Sigle
pleaded guilty before Judge DeVesa on July
25. At his guilty plea hearing, Sigle, operator
of the Country View Care Center in Monroe,
admitted that he accepted an unspecified
amount of financial kickbacks from Stavitski
in return for directing prescriptions for
residents of Country View to Belmar Hometown
Pharmacy.
Stavitski
was prosecuted by the Medicaid Fraud Control
Unit of the Office of Insurance Fraud Prosecutor.
Stavitski was sentenced on June 18, 2004
to seven years in state prison and ordered
to pay more than $1.1 million in restitution
after pleading guilty to Health Care Claims
Fraud.
State
Investigators Anthony Iannice and Jacqueline
Latty and Deputy Attorney General Alvina
Seto coordinated the investigations. Seto
represented the Office of Insurance Fraud
Prosecutor at the sentencing.
“Abuse
of the Medicaid program by persons who hold
professional licenses is particularly disturbing,”
said Insurance Fraud Prosecutor Brown. “Medicaid
fraud involves not only theft of tax dollars,
but theft from a program designed to assist
those who can’t afford health insurance
or health care services. Such cases are
a priority for the Office of the Insurance
Fraud Prosecutor.”
Prosecutor
Brown noted that some important cases have
started with anonymous tips. People who
are concerned about insurance cheating and
have information about a fraud can report
it anonymously by calling the toll-free
hotline 1-877-55-FRAUD
or visiting the Web at www.NJInsuranceFraud.org.
State regulations permit an award to be
paid to an eligible person who provides
information that leads to an arrest, prosecution
and conviction for insurance fraud.
The
Office of Insurance Fraud Prosecutor was
established by the Automobile Insurance
Cost Reduction Act of 1998. The office is
the centralized state agency that investigates
and prosecutes both civil and criminal insurance
fraud, as well as Medicaid fraud.
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