Two plead guilty in brace scheme 

ATLANTA – Brett Weiner and Valerie Desalvo have pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges for their role in buying and selling fake doctors’ orders used to obtain more than $1.5 million in fraudulent payments from Medicare, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia. Weiner and Desalvo owned and operated Laboratory Marketing Services, a business in Boca Raton, Fla., that, among other things, received kickback payments in exchange for patient “leads” consisting of billable personal identifying information of Medicare beneficiaries, according to court documents. They allegedly received bribes from DME companies such as Medihealth Medical Solutions in Amory, Miss., and Liberty Medical DME in Atlanta in exchange for the leads. They also allegedly bought and sold signed doctors’ orders from Nagaindra Srivastav and his company B2B Apps Solutions in Tampa, Fla., which they sold to DME companies. A substantial portion of the doctors’ orders that Weiner and Desalvo purchased from Srivastav and B2B contained forged signatures or purported approvals of physicians or other health care providers whose names and professional identifying information were used without their authorization or knowledge, according to court documents. In total, Weiner and Desalvo, through LMS, caused the submission of more than $1.5 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare, which generated approximately $715,000 in payments, for braces that were procured through the payment of illegal kickbacks and bribes and were ineligible for Medicare reimbursement. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 8 before U.S. District Judge Steve Jones.