South Florida man pleads guilty to ripping off Medicare in genetic-testing scheme
On the day he was set to face trial, a South Florida man charged with pocketing bribes for steering patients to a genetic lab-testing company that billed Medicare millions chose instead to admit his crime in Miami federal court.
Michael Stein pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by soliciting and receiving kickbacks from another South Florida man who co-owned Panda Conservation Group. The Texas-based company operated two genetic testing labs that billed $90 million to the taxpayer-funded Medicare program and received $60 million in payments between April and November 2020.
Stein, 36, of Lake Worth, faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing June 13 before U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga. Justice Department prosecutor James Hayes and defense attorney Howard Srebnick will address his share of the Medicare losses and the impact on his punishment at the sentencing, according to court records.
Panda’s co-owner, Leonel Palatnik, and Stein were accused of conspiring to fleece the U.S. government’s insurance program for senior citizens and indigent by exploiting waivers granted to telemedicine providers during the COVID-19 pandemic, prosecutors said.
In 2021, Palatnik, 44, of Aventura, was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison after pleading guilty to defrauding Medicare and paying kickbacks to Stein as part of their scheme to bill the federal insurance program for thousands of unnecessary lab tests at Panda.
As part of his plea deal, Palatnik admitted that he paid $50,000 a month in kickbacks to Stein, owner of 1523 Holdings LLC in Hollywood, in exchange for his arranging for telemedicine providers to approve genetic testing orders for patients at Panda’s labs. Stein also acknowledged the illicit payoffs in a factual statement filed with his plea agreement.
The illegal monthly payments were disguised as tech-related consulting services, according to prosecutors with the Justice Department. Their business dealings profited dramatically from the pandemic when the U.S. government lifted some telehealth restrictions that made it easier for Medicare patients to receive medical care from home, prosecutors said.
In turn, Palatnik took advantage of the government waivers by using telehealth providers who authorized thousands of medically unnecessary cancer and cardiovascular genetic testing orders at Panda’s labs, prosecutors said. In exchange, Panda gave the telehealth providers access to patient information so they could bill for medical consultations that often did not take place.
Palatnik, who was born in Argentina and raised in the United States, was ordered to pay back $686,590 of his company’s ill-gotten Medicare payments to the federal government.
The case, investigated by the FBI and Health and Human Services, was part of a COVID-19 Health Care Fraud take-down of 14 defendants in seven federal districts in May 2021.
This story was originally published April 10, 2023 at 6:21 PM.
