Dallas Defense Attorney Blog

A federal jury said two Miami-Dade doctors and two medical assistants filed $5.3 million in bogus Medicare claims.

By JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

They manipulated blood samples. Falsified medical records. Wrote prescriptions for HIV patients who didn’t need their obsolete drugs.

They even tossed out the infusion medication but kept the empty bottles in case Medicare investigators ever checked out their fraudulent clinics. On Tuesday, a federal jury convicted two Miami-Dade doctors and two medical assistants of plotting to submit millions of dollars in bogus bills to Medicare — a fraud case that stands out because one defendant allegedly tried to flee near the end of the trial.

The 12-person jury found Dr. David Rothman, Dr. Keith Russell, Eda Marietta Milanes and Jorge Luis Pacheco guilty of conspiring to commit fraud and other charges for filing $5.3 million in false HIV-therapy claims with the nation’s healthcare program.

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Financier Charles Hurwitz, who took over Pacific Lumber Co. in 1986 and touched off a storm of protest with his tree-cutting practices, must go to trial in a lawsuit filed by a former state forestry director accusing him of defrauding the federal government into paying $250 million for the pristine Headwaters Forest, a federal judge has ruled.

The case, scheduled for trial April 20 in Oakland, centers on the company’s sale in 1999 of the 3,000-acre Humboldt County forest, the nation’s largest privately owned old-growth redwood grove. In a deal brokered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Pacific Lumber also promised to follow stringent logging practices and preserve the habitat of endangered creatures on its remaining 210,000 acres of timberland in Northern California.
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NEWARK, N.J. - A New Jersey man has pleaded guilty in a mortgage fraud and property-flipping scheme involving rental properties in Paterson.

At his plea hearing Tuesday in federal court in Newark, 47-year-old Renford Davis of Paterson admitted conspiring with several co-defendants by recruiting borrowers to purchase two- and three-family homes in Paterson and providing false verifications to help them qualify for mortgage loans.

Prosecutors say Davis and others received substantial portions of the fraudulent loan proceeds after the closings.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors have unveiled a beefed up indictment against a New York lawyer suspected of bilking hedge funds out of about $700 million.

The indictment released Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan accuses Marc Dreier with money laundering, among other charges. Dreier was already charged with conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, securities fraud and wire fraud.

Until December, he had led a law firm with 250 attorneys and celebrity clients. He was arrested after hedge funds complained he was stealing from them.

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Robert Lomas, 53, of Redwood City, got his nickname in the spring of 2007 during a series of bank heists he committed in the midst of a downward spiral in his personal life, defense attorney Richard Keyes told a jury Thursday during opening statements in his client’s murder trial.

The crisis for Lomas began with a domestic violence conviction for battering his wife Linda in a jealous rage, continued with the loss of his job at an auto-parts store, and further escalated as he tried to win his wife back from the arms of other men, both real and imagined, with thousands of dollars he stole from more than half a dozen area banks, Keyes said.

The defense attorney played the jury video footage of Lomas’ confession from the night of the murder to underscore the man’s affection for his murdered wife, Linda.

“She was my star, she was my life,” Lomas tearfully told investigators. “Everything I did was to keep her happy.”

What Lomas did to keep his wife content ranged from cleaning the couple’s studio apartment to cooking meals and, according to evidence, robbing banks and handing a good deal of the proceeds over to her, Keyes told the San Mateo County Superior Court jury. Read the rest of the article

Bernard Madoff’s lawyers have appealed his jailing, saying he should be released until sentencing because he never fled, even knowing he could expect to die in prison. Madoff’s lawyers filed papers with a federal appeals court Friday.

The disgraced money manager pleaded guilty Thursday to 11 felony counts, including securities fraud, in what may be the biggest fraud in Wall Street history. His $10 million bail was immediately revoked.

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The defense in Phil Spector’s murder retrial rested its case Thursday with the testimony of a memory expert summoned to undermine a key prosecution witness.

UC Irvine professor Elizabeth Loftus summarized research suggesting that certain circumstances — including stress, fear and exhaustion — can lead witnesses to misremember events. Loftus spoke generally about the limits of human memory, but questions by a defense attorney referenced the circumstances in which Spector’s former driver, Adriano de Souza, says he heard the music producer admit to shooting actress Lana Clarkson in his home. Read the rest of the article