Dallas area home to huge health care frauds

Hundreds of North Texas Nigerian-Americans are caught up in the biggest home health care frauds ever uncovered by U.S. law enforcement.

Federal indictments were issued in 2012 against those who allegedly profited the most from half a billion dollars in fraudulent local Medicare billings. But many other Nigerian-Americans living in the area and operating small health care businesses were also involved, federal law enforcement officials say.

Those officials say most of the health care fraud in Texas is committed by Texans with no particular ethnic background. And community leaders insist most Nigerian-Americans in the health care business in the Dallas area are honest.

But law enforcement officials and leaders in the Nigerian-American community describe Dallas home health care fraud as rampant and say a surprising number of the perpetrators — a third of all cases under investigation — involve Nigerian-Americans.

More at http://www.dallasnews.com/business/health-care/20140215-dallas-area-home-to-huge-health-care-frauds.ece .