Swindling Medicare 'easy,' fraudster tells House panel

Bilking Medicare out of millions of dollars is "incredibly easy," a convicted felon told a House oversight subpanel Wednesday afternoon.

Aghaegbuna "Ike" Odelugo, who faces sentencing this spring for Medicare fraud, told lawmakers it didn’t take “more than a month” to develop a scheme that swindled Medicare out of nearly $10 million over a three-year period.

Odelugo, a Nigerian native who gamed Medicare’s durable medical equipment (DME) system, said he only needed basic data-entry skills and a few fraudulent marketers.

“With these two essential ingredients, one possesses a recipe for fraud and abuse,” Odelugo told the House Ways and Means oversight subpanel.

In written testimony, Odelugo offered several explanations for why the DME payment system is vulnerable to fraud:

• marketers and providers can submit claims for reimbursement based on forged prescriptions;
• multiple billing codes for similar items make it possible to avoid Medicare’s red flags;
• unique physician identifiers are too easily accessible to the public; and
• the reimbursement system encourages abuse.
  

Odelugo recommended setting up a one- to two-year probationary period that would require any DME provider to be bonded by an independent bonding company. Imposing the requirement would “weed out” those looking to make a quick buck off the system, he said.