FBI captures Medicare fraud fugitive in Italy, brings him to Miami after 20 years on lam
Twenty years ago, Robert Peter Sauve was charged with ripping off millions of dollars from the federal Medicare program — but he fled the Miami area before the FBI could arrest him.
On Thursday night, FBI agents brought the 63-year-old Sauve back to Miami from Italy. He had recently traveled there from his native Canada.
Sauve, who had been living for years in Montreal, is now in custody at a federal lock-up in downtown Miami — one of dozens of fugitives who have been captured after escaping prosecution on Medicare fraud charges in South Florida. Dozens of others are still at large. The Miami Herald has chronicled the phenomenon over the years, including an interactive graphic and story, “Rogues of Medicare,” in 2018.
Together, these fleeing scofflaws have been accused of collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent Medicare payments by filing billions in false claims, including for medical equipment, physical therapy and HIV-infusion drugs — like Sauve’s healthcare fraud case. Where do they typically go? Cuba, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries.
Sauve was caught in Italy — an anomaly.
On Friday, the FBI declined to comment on his capture.
Sauve made his first appearance in Miami federal court on Friday afternoon, when he faced the conspiracy, healthcare fraud and related charges for the first time.
In the early 2000s, Sauve and a partner opened a pair of clinics in Miami Beach that authorities say were fronts for treating patients with HIV, and billed millions of dollars to the federal Medicare insurance program for bogus injection services.
Sauve owned the Lefebvre Institute on Michigan Avenue, according to an indictment. Leonardo Javier Bolanos owned the Bolanos Institute on Washington Avenue, with assistance from Sauve.
The two clinics, which allegedly paid kickbacks to doctors and patients for their roles in the billing scheme, collected nearly $4 million from the taxpayer-funded Medicare program for HIV-infusion drug treatments such as Neupogen and Procrit injections, according to the indictment. But the patients either didn’t receive the treatments or they didn’t need them.
Back then, billing Medicare for these types of drugs to treat patients with the virus that causes AIDS was rampant in South Florida. The Herald reported that regional clinics submitted more claims for HIV-infusion therapy drugs than the rest of the country combined.
In 2004, both Bolanos and Sauve were indicted along with seven other defendants. But while the others were eventually convicted by plea or at trial and sentenced to prison, Bolanos and Sauve vanished.
Bolanos, a 58-year-old Cuban immigrant, is still at large.
This story was originally published November 22, 2024 at 3:48 PM.
