In the last 30 days, five-year prison sentences were handed down in two healthcare fraud cases involving orthopedics and sports medicine.
Here's what you should know:
1. James Rice, MD, owner of Pinehurst, N.C.-based Sandhills Orthopaedic and Spine Clinic, and his wife Susan, who oversaw administrative operations at the practice, conspired to defraud the IRS, evaded tax payments and failed to pay employment taxes and file tax returns. In total, the surgeon and his wife did not pay more than $2.4 million in personal, corporate and employment taxes they owed. They also withheld almost $580,000 in Social Security and other taxes from employee wages from 2007 to 2016 and kept those funds for their own use instead of turning them over to the IRS.
2. Robert McCune, who played for the Washington Commanders, pleaded guilty to submitting false claims to the Gene Upshaw NFL Player Health Reimbursement Account Plan for himself and on behalf of several other retired NFL players. The sum of the fraudulent claims among Mr. McCune and his alleged co-conspirators was about $2.9 million.