News reports today indicate that Bravo celebrity Jen Shah was sentenced to 78 months for her role in a wire fraud that resulted in $5 million in losses.

For people unfamiliar with the federal sentencing guidelines, the base offense level for a wire fraud is enhanced by a number of levels that corresponds to the loss amount. For a loss of more than $3.5 million but less than $9.5 million, USSG 2B1.1 instructs that 18 additional levels should be added to the base offense level. The resulting offense level may then be further enhanced by additional characteristics of the crime including the number of victims and the the special vulnerability of victims, or additional characteristics of the offender, such as whether he or she used a special skill or abused a position of trust. The total offense level then corresponds to a range of months which increases vertically by the prior criminal history of a defendant.

In this case, Jen Shah’s attorneys requested a significant variance down from the applicable 130 month guideline range, insisting that Ms. Shah should serve no more than 36 months, or 3 years. To challenge Jen Shah’s recommended sentencing range, and justify such a significant variance, her lawyers presented mitigating factors pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3553, which requires a sentencing court to consider the personal history and characteristics of the defendant, the nature and circumstances of the offense, and any other relevant factor that mitigate or reduce the defendant’s culpability.

Even though there are guidelines instructing recommended sentencing ranges for specific offenses, defendants are entitled to individualized sentencing that takes into account their personal history and circumstances, and the specific circumstances of the crime that may distinguish it from the “heartland” case. For defendants facing federal charges, it is crucial to hire a criminal defense attorney with experience in federal criminal matters, and the special skill required to assemble and present a compelling sentencing mitigation argument.

The lawyers at Stahl Gasiorowski. PC have represented hundreds of federal defendants before sentencing courts in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere. For each and every case, we delve into a client’s personal history, and the facts of the case, to present an exquisitely crafted sentencing memo that puts the client’s criminal conduct into context and establishes a reasoned and emotional basis for leniency. To contact the firm’s NJ office, call 908.301.9001 and to contact the firm’s NYC office, call 212.755.3300.

Last fall Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced the Department of Justice’s more aggressive approach to corporate compliance. In her policy speech this week, she highlighted a series of new policies and warned cooperating companies not to slow walk their disclosures, told prosecutors to speed up their investigations and expanded self-reporting programs throughout the Department.

Of note, Monaco acknowledged the past year’s decline in corporate prosecutions. In an effort to assist prosecutors’ timely investigations of individuals, Monaco said that any company that delays in turning over key documents and information to the government will risk losing some or all credit for cooperating. While companies are already required to turn over non-privileged information about employee wrongdoing in order to receive cooperation credit, Monaco said that the DOJ would view companies more favorably that claw back compensation from those employees. In her view, such a policy could deter wrongdoing — “compensation systems that clearly and effectively impose financial penalties for misconduct can deter risky behavior and foster a culture of compliance.”

Recidivist corporate offenders, even for unrelated prior misconduct, were warned that any prior violations would factor into DOJ’s treatment of new offenses. But, in an attempt to assuage corporate anxiety about prior misdeeds that resulted in either civil fines or criminal pleas, Monaco said that criminal resolutions more than 10 years old, and civil or regulatory settlements more than 5 years old, would be given less weight.

Lastly, Monaco said that every section of DOJ that prosecutes corporate crime will develop an individualized program to incentivize corporate self-disclosure. The common principles for these programs will include foregoing guilty pleas when the company self-reports, cooperates and remediates the misconduct. Further, monitorships, while back in favor and to be freely implemented when appropriate, will be circumscribed when the above requirements have been met. Prosecutors will be tasked, however, with making sure that the monitors are performing properly and stay on budget.

Federal investigations and prosecutions of corporations and individual employees and officers are complex and time consuming. There are a variety of factors that must be considered to properly defend the company and its employees while conducting an independent investigation of the alleged wrongdoing. Stahl Gasiorowski Criminal Defense Lawyers have extensive experience representing individuals and corporations accused of fraud. To contact the firm’s NJ office, call 908.301.9001 and to contact the firm’s NYC office, call 212.755.3300, or email Mr. Stahl at rstahl@stahlesq.com.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS, OIG) issued a special fraud alert advising healthcare providers to exercise caution when contracting with telemedicine companies. Such alerts are significant as they put providers on notice that OIG intends to investigate and prosecute potential fraud regarding telemedicine/. Such notices provide the opportunity for healthcare providers to review their practices and compliance, as well as list examples of suspect practices in the industry.

Historically, federal regulations limited the use and scope of telemedicine. It became widely available, however, during the COVID crisis that necessitated the loosening of government regulations. While a relaxation of regulations and restrictions offered patients greater access to physicians, it also opened the door to fraudulent conduct. In previous articles, we explored schemes involving compound medicines, genetic cancer screening (CGx and PGx tests) and durable medical equipment (DME) such as orthotic braces.

This latest fraud alert confirms that OIG is still aggressively targeting DME companies, laboratories and pharmacies using telehealth services. The OIG alert offers a non-comprehensive list of factors that they examine in potential fraud cases, including:

1. Patients that are referred to a practitioner through a telemedicine company, telemarketing, recruiter, call center, health fair or internet;
2. Practitioner has only limited access or contact with the alleged patient to meaningfully access the medical necessity of the services solicited;
3. Telemedicine company compensates the practitioner based on the volume of prescriptions and services;
4. Telemedicine company only provides services to federal health care program beneficiaries, and does not accept private insurance;
5. Telemedicine company only provides a single class of products such as braces, genetic testing, compound medicines – pain, scar and vitamin creams – thus limiting a practitioner’s treatment options; and
6. Telemedicine company does not expect its physicians to follow up with the patients regarding their prescriptions or services.

This alert expressly notes that proactive marketing that advertises free or low cost items or services covered by federal healthcare programs and exclusively marketed to such beneficiaries is “suspect”. Additionally, any program that limits a practitioner from contacting a patient to follow up or offer other medical services is suspect.

While HHS, OIG alerts provide valuable guidance for practitioners and other healthcare professionals, they also provide federal prosecutors the opportunity to argue that a provider’s good faith defense is limited after such an alert has been issued, i.e. that providers are on notice that such practices as suspect.

Stahl Gasiorowski Criminal Defense Attorneys have represented dozens of physicians, marketers, telehealth companies and pharmacists in federal healthcare fraud investigations. We proactively and aggressively protect our clients’ rights. To contact Mr. Stahl, call 908.301.9001 for the NJ office and 212.755.3300 for the NYC office, or email Mr. Stahl at rgs@sgdefenselaw.com.

The Department of Justice just announced charges against 21 individuals in a nationwide crackdown of COVID-19 related prosecutions that resulted in $150 million worth of fraud. The schemes were varied and involved medical doctors, medical labs, marketers and others in the healthcare field.

For instance, two owners of a lab in California allegedly billed more than $125 million in fraudulent claims. In Maryland and New York drive through test site operators are accused of using confidential patient information to bill for lengthy office visits that never occurred. In New Jersey, five individuals were accused of paying or receiving kickbacks for referring COVID tests to a particular lab. Even though the tests were medically necessary, and the lab only billed the allowable rate to the government program, the lab was accused of violating the anti-kickback statute that prohibits paying individuals or companies to refer tests.

The Maryland case charged a physician with submitting false claims to Medicare and private insurers. The defendant owned drive through COVID testing sites. Employees gathered patient information at the sites and later submitted false claims for complex in office visits for other healthcare procedures that never occurred.

In Florida, a registered nurse was charged with signing huge numbers of medically unnecessary doctor’s orders in exchange for sham telemedicine consulting fees. Another case in Florida charged individuals with fraudulent Medicare billing for medical equipment that was obtained by paying kickbacks to marketing companies that solicited patients for equipment they didn’t need.

In other schemes, defendants in California were charged with allegedly counterfeiting vaccine cards. Another case involved a hospital pharmacy director who obtained authentic Moderna dose lot numbers and used them to falsify vaccine ecards.

In New Jersey, one of the District’s first healthcare fraud trials just resulted in a guilty verdict against a medical sales representative of a diagnostic lab who paid kickbacks to a physician for referring tests to the lab. In an effort to disguise the kickbacks, the marketer placed the physician’s medical assistant on the lab’s payroll. In a related scheme, the marketer was paid for promoting medically unnecessary compound medicines that certain insurance plans covered. The defendant and others paid kickbacks to doctors to prescribe the unnecessary compounds without even examining the patients.

Other cases have charged individuals with fraudulently obtaining relief funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. A 2020 bill that provided billion in emergency financial assistance.

These and scores of other cases highlight federal authorities continuing investigations and DOJ’s aggressive prosecution of a variety of healthcare fraud schemes. These schemes involve medically unnecessary compound medicines, genetic cancer tests, kickbacks on prescriptions for DME – durable medical equipment – such as braces, as well as COVID-19 tests.

Federal healthcare laws and regulations are complex. There are countless ways for doctors, pharmacists, lab owners and marketers to violate these laws. Stahl Gasiorowski Criminal Defense Lawyers have extensive experience representing individuals and corporations accused of healthcare fraud. To contact the firm’s NJ office, call 908.301.9001 and to contact the firm’s NYC office, call 212.755.3300, or email Mr. Stahl at rgs@sgdefenselaw.com.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is planning a hiring spree to investigate and prosecute pandemic related fraud and traditional white collar crimes. President Biden’s budget seeks $3.5 million to hire an additional 120 prosecutors to focus on pandemic related fraud and $325 million for 900 additional FBI agents to investigate white collar crimes.

Speaking at the ABA’s annual white collar crime conference, Garland said that DOJ’s interest in white collar crimes is once again being prioritized. DOJ is placing renewed emphasis on serving victims of white collar crime with an approach similar to that in violent crimes. What this means is that DOJ will place a greater emphasis on victims’ rights and economic losses. There will be a renewed effort on criminally prosecuting responsible corporate officers, rather than merely accepting big-dollar corporate pleas or civil resolutions with large financial penalties.

This announcement comes on the heels of DOJ’s new hires for the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section late last year, as well as its renewed efforts in prosecuting environmental and antitrust matters. In addition to the new funds and hires, DOJ will use what the AG calls “force multipliers” to uncover fraud – partnerships with government agencies in the U.S. and abroad and new data analytics. Embedded in the Fraud Section are FBI data experts that model their assessments of payment anomalies and other activity patterns first developed in investigations of health care fraud.

A.G. Garland also announced the formation of KleptoCapture, its new Russian sanctions task force headed by former SDNY AUSA Andrew Adams. With more than a dozen prosecutors, the task force is designed to quickly and aggressively enforce sanctions here, and those coordinated with other countries, to punish the Kremlin and certain oligarchs for the invasion of Ukraine.

Stahl Gasiorowski Criminal Defense Attorneys actively and aggressively defend clients being investigated and prosecuted for white-collar fraud. We have successfully defended cases involving health care fraud, tax fraud, crypto currency, international money transfers and money laundering, import duties and taxes, and other types of sophisticated fraudulent schemes. To contact Mr. Stahl, call 908.301.9001 for the NJ office and 212.755.3300 for the NYC office, or email Mr. Stahl at rstahl@stahlesq.com.

In addition to the 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country that investigate and prosecute health care fraud, the Fraud Section of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division based in Washington D.C. has approximately 76 federal prosecutors devoted to such prosecutions. This DOJ Unit targets complex health care fraud involving illegal prescription, distribution and diversion of opioids; telemedicine fraud; and fraud related to COVID, including counterfeit vaccine cards.

The just released year-end report for 2021 reveals the total cases prosecuted and significant cases of note. The unit charged 202 individuals involved in $1.75 billion in alleged losses, with a significant number of guilty pleas, as well as convictions at trial.

Just in September 2021 alone, DOJ announced charges against 138 defendants, including 42 medical professionals, in connection with a national health care fraud enforcement action.

The Unit is assisted by a data analytics team that identifies suspicious health care billing patterns and likely geographic hotspots for fraud and illegal opioid distribution. In 2021, this data analytics team made 385 proactive investigative referrals to various federal law enforcement agencies.

In addition to the illegal prescription and distribution of opioids, the Unit has aggressively targeted laboratories, telemedicine doctors and nurse practitioners, marketers and pharmacies engaging in illegal kickback schemes. These schemes are designed to induce medical professionals to order medically unnecessary compound medicines, such as pain creams, scar creams, vitamins and migraine medication; or orders for unnecessary laboratory tests for genetic cancer screenings. The payments include money based on a per prescription basis, whether in the form of direct payments, payments to the physician’s spouse, or disguised as lease payments or alleged ownership interest payments for a physician-owned lab.

Stahl Gasiorowski Criminal Defense Attorneys actively and aggressively defend clients being investigated and prosecuted for health care fraud. Over the past five years we have defended numerous physicians, pharmacists, marketers and lab owners accused of health care fraud. To contact Mr. Stahl, call 908.301.9001 for the NJ office and 212.755.3300 for the NYC office, or email Mr. Stahl at rgs@sgdefenselaw.com.

Chief Financial Officers, Account Managers and bookkeepers all, to vary degrees, are trusted employees who have access to corporate funds. Access to company funds, with little or sporadic oversight, can leave a company vulnerable to a variety of fraudulent schemes to obtain funds those employees were not entitled to. Common schemes include:

1. The trusted employee setting up fictitious companies as suppliers of goods and materials and creating false invoices for payment.
2. Another scenario involves the trusted employee engaging in a kickback scheme with an actual outside vendor/supplier to inflate invoices and “kick back” a percentage of the funds received from the company.
3. Other schemes simply involve a trusted employee giving themselves bonuses and other unauthorized forms of compensation.

These schemes can go undetected for years and often result in the loss of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. They are usually detected when the company experiences a significant downturn in revenue, a verified audit, or the potential sale of the company requiring a close examination of the books and records.

When such schemes are discovered, the employer or counsel will usually retain a forensic accountant to uncover the extent of the fraud. Counsel will often advise the employer to confront the employee and convince them to pay back as much of the stolen funds as possible before notifying law enforcement. The employer may lead the employee to believe that they want to work with them to recover the funds and to make the company as whole as possible without the need for attorneys, litigation or law enforcement. Many employers will suggest that the employee “cooperate” and voluntarily turn over their retirement funds, monies in their family checking and savings accounts, and sell their home and other valuables in order to pay back the funds that were improperly taken.

What an employee needs to know is that they should first retain experienced criminal defense counsel to assist them throughout this complicated process. This is critical for a number of reasons.

First, anything the employee says to the employer or their counsel is likely an admission against interest and can be used in a future criminal prosecution.

Second, the employee needs the advice of counsel about the potential benefits versus risks of acknowledging the theft and the repayment of all or part of the monies taken prior to any potential criminal case.

Third, the employee needs their own attorney to deal with the employer to make sure that any monies repaid are handled correctly and that retirement funds are not simply liquidated without sufficient funds remaining to pay the interest and penalties usually due for early withdrawal.

Fourth, despite any conversations or assurances that law enforcement will not be contacted if the employee returns the funds, there is nothing that can bind an employer to such a promise. Any assurance not to report is against public policy and unenforceable as a matter of law.

Seizure of bank accounts, assets and real property through civil litigation is a very time consuming and costly endeavor. Once law enforcement is involved, prosecutors are more focused on the criminal charges, while restitution and forfeiture are a secondary concern. Consequently, most employers try to recover as much money as they can before notifying law enforcement. It is much easier for the company to recover funds with the cooperation of the former employee. Thus, it is critical for the employee to retain experienced criminal defense counsel at the outset.

Stahl Gasiorowski Criminal Defense is here for all your criminal legal needs. We are experienced in all types of complex criminal matters involving a many types of electronic evidence. To contact the firm’s NJ office, call 908.301.9001 and to contact the firm’s NYC office, call 212.755.3300, or email Mr. Stahl at rstahl@stahlesq.com.

But what can make matters worse in our legal minefield of state and federal criminal laws is that not only are there seemingly more mines being planted all the time, but the mines themselves are becoming bigger. What we are referring to is the trend toward increasing the jail or prison time, fines and other sanctions that you may face if you are convicted of crimes that are already serious in nature, such as white collar crimes.

The convergence of a steadily increasing body of criminal laws that you can find yourself in violation of, even inadvertently, coupled with the steadily increasing severity of the sanctions for such violations, means that if you find yourself accused of a serious offense such as fraud, or tax evasion, or embezzlement, you need legal representation that can keep up with the growing seriousness of the crimes that you can be charged with. You don’t go to a general practitioner when you are diagnosed with cancer; likewise, you should not trust your legal rights and even your freedom to a general practice attorney when agents and agencies of the New Jersey state government or the federal government set their sights on you.

At the Law Offices or Robert G. Stahl, our attorneys are highly experienced in defense against many kinds of serious, white collar crimes. We know that it is essential to get started on your legal defense as quickly, thoroughly and aggressively as possible to present the best case possible for our clients, whether in pretrial negotiations or in trial defense. If you find yourself under government scrutiny based on accusations of serious crimes, contact us as soon as possible. Time is not your ally when you are being targeted by the government.

Fraud is probably the most common white-collar crime. Unlike a theft crime in which money or personal property is physically removed from the possession of a victim, a fraud victim loses the money or property a result of a lie, trick or deception. For example, someone running a Ponzi scheme tricks investors into parting with their money by promising them extremely high returns on an investment that does not exist.

Another form of white collar crime is money laundering in which money obtained from an unlawful enterprise, such as from the sale of illegal drugs, is “laundered” to make it lose its connection to the illegal origins. A money laundering operation might have legitimate businesses through which the unlawfully obtained money is passed.

People sometimes confuse tax evasion, which is a criminal offense, with making legitimate use of tax deductions and credits to minimize your tax liability. Trying to reduce the taxes you must pay to New Jersey or to the federal government is not illegal, but not reporting income or making up phony deductions could be tax fraud.

Many white collar crimes, such as securities fraud and insider trading, wire and mail fraud, and mortgage fraud and falsifying documents, may lead to a federal investigation that could end with criminal charges being filed. White collar crime charges, such as RICO/racketeering cases and Medicare and Medicaid fraud, can be complicated.

As informative as this posting might be, it is not offered as or intended to be relied upon as legal advice. Your best source for legal advice should be an experienced federal criminal defenseattorney.

When we hear the term white-collar crime, we may think of a business executive wearing a business suit planning some sort of arcane scheme involving complex and little understood corporate financial matters, like money laundering or insider-trading. But is this understanding entirely accurate? While these examples do indeed represent types of white-collar crime, the term itself includes many different kinds of the illegal activity.

As a general rule, white-collar crimes are nonviolent crimes. The main motivation behind them is the desire to realize financial gain by illegal means. There is no particular description of the type of person who becomes a white-collar criminal; one need not go to college, or hold a high-level company position, or steal a large amount of money to commit a white-collar crime. In fact, many types of white-collar crime are committed by otherwise decidedly ordinary people:

• a clerical worker failing to pay taxes;
• a cashier stealing money from the register;
• a person who fakes an injury to collect insurance benefits;
• a person who provides false information to obtain a home mortgage.

Despite their nonviolent nature, white-collar crimes can still lead to serious federal and New Jersey state penalties including lengthy prison sentences and heavy fines.

Accordingly, if you have been accused of a white-collar crime, you should take your legal defense has seriously as you would had you been accused of a crime of violence, beginning with the selection of a law firm that has experience with defending clients charged with money-related crimes.