MASSIVE takedown: Hundreds charged in BILLION-DOLLAR fraud scheme

This is a Fox News alert and a massive bust announced this week.DOJ charging a total of 455 people, including doctors, across 45 states for their alleged role in $6 .5 billion worth of fraud schemes.That massive takedown involves a heartbreaking story about an 18 -year -old college basketball player who died on his campus.A doctor is now in custody.And the administrator of the U .S.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Oz, who I spoke to earlier, says he is not playing games anymore.

It's a war on fraud, the likes of which you have never seen.So that kid was hurt irreparably, passed away because nothing was done about these fraudsters, and they went right after it.Their company billed over $90 million while a child was buried by their family.

We spoke about this case and more, and here is our interview.Dr. Oz, thank you so much for being here.I want to start by asking you about a beautiful young man, 18 years old.We have his picture, Caden Francis.We often think about fraud having financial victims, but this is a human victim.Tell me about Caden.

So I spoke to Caden's mom, Julian, and wonderful kid, A student, was doing just fine, and she got caught up, the mom, in this scam where they were trying to scare parents, and then they would offer these tests to screen the hearts of these kids to make sure that they were healthy.The problem here is, apparently, the doctor never really looked at the tests.We believe that because the Department of Justice identified that within 11 seconds of getting the test results on this wonderful young man, they said he was fine.Within a month, he was dead.And if you actually look at the autopsy, the mom that spoke to me about this, your heart normally is the size of a fist.His heart was two and a half times bigger than this, almost the size of a basketball, a big heart.

And when you have a heart that large and youpush it because you're playing sports, it'll stop sometimes.And that's what happened to this poor young man.Mother lost him, and in her words, she says he was like any street criminal who murdered somebody.That's how clear it was to her that he was a bad person.And she wants that doctor, in her words, to rot in jail so he doesn't hurt more people out on the streets, even though her son will never come back.

And you beautifully point out the reality that These folks who are willing to steal from our most vulnerable are more than happy to take your health, they'll steal your life.And that's the pathology we're dealing with.The human cost of the fraud that we have tolerated, and especially since COVID, is massive.But it also corrupts the fundamental infrastructure of our social networks, of our programs to help people who are, as Hubert Humphrey said, I'm in the Hubert Humphrey building right now, the Healthy Human Services building, he said it was a moral test of government to take care of those at the dawn of life, our children, obviously the system failed Caden, those at the twilight of life, our seniors, hospice is a good example where we're failing them, and those living in the shadows.And we have examples of folks in all three of those categories who have been hurt, and when you let that kind of money taken out of the system, you encourage more corruption, more crime.It's about $100 billion a year that we're tracking.

Dr. Oz, just so I understand, because you're a heart doctor.So this doctor was allegedly giving an EKG that was not medically correct, clearing this young man to go out there, and then he dies.And you've spoken to his mom, just on a human level.How is she doing?Because I would be so upset, so angry.You gave us a quote from her, but you've spoken to her.

I have spoken to her, and I've been connecting by text as well since the conversation.I spoke to his older brother, by the way, who said that Caden was, although I'm older than him, he was always the person that all of us admired.He just did everything well.And he was playing college basketball as an NNA student.So he was doing a lot of things, juggling a lot of balls.in the air.

And I'm thinking about the fact that this wonderful family, they're from Florida, by the way.So people say this is a politically motivated, these people living in a red state, right?I don't know if they're Democrats, Republicans, who cares?When a child dies, that doesn't matter anymore.We have to prevent these types of criminals from thriving in our ecosystem.And the problem really did accentuate during COVID because we taught a lot of criminals including multinational organizations, many of them foreign, that they could steal from the federal government, and we would not come after them.

And we taught that in four years of mismanagement under the Biden administration, and the president came in and said, no more.He cares so much about it that, as you know, we appointed the vice president to lead the anti -fraud task force.The event we had on Tuesday, we talked about Caden and several other cases.We have hundreds of cases.Just in two weeks, we brought to the American people on Tuesday $6 .5 billion of money.money now saved and brought back into our coffers.

And Kelly, the human cost is apparent, the affordability issues there, because if you stop the fraud in Medicare, you will double the life expectancy of this precious program.Imagine that.Everyone who's working right now, they're paying taxes towards Medicare at 2 .9%, right?You could assure yourself that it'll be there for you because we will double the life expectancy of the Medicare trust fund if we cut the fraud out.So it makes it more affordable.We feel proud of a system that's able to be sustained.

We take care of our people more effectively.Who would be against that?

Right?Doubling the solvency of the Medicare trust fund.That's crazy.This product consequences.I also want to ask you about Orrin Satcher.He was arrested by the FBI.

We have some footage of that.He essentially was working allegedly with the mortuary being given the names of dead people and getting hospice cash for that.And he bought a Rolls Royce.Tell me about this guy.

So this I'll call him a scum because heis, was running a hospice.When you run a hospice, one of the ways we catch you as being a thief and a liar is no one dies.Remember, hospice is built for people at the end of their lives.So if no one ever dies, you're not really running a hospice.You're just stealing money.

And so he would lie to us by going to a morgue, getting the names of people who had passed, and pretending he'd enrolled them in his hospice before they died.So when we actually looked at his data, it looked like he was having the normal number of people pass away while under his care.The real question, though, is how does he get away with that?How is it possible this huge flaw in this system is allowed to prosper?And, of course, that's in California.We're seeing pathology in New York and a few other states.

And I'm going to make an argument right here on your show.I think this is not a flaw in some states.It's a feature.And here's why.If you look, for example, at personal care services, which are, when you do things things for your family that your family used to do for you, like carry the groceries upstairs.In America right now, we're paying people to do that.

In New York State, there's twice as many people doing that as any other job in the state.Same in California.Well, think about this.Instead of being unemployed, you could have people carry groceries and get paid by the federal government.And then what you do is you can tax those benefits that they're getting, right, what their salaries are, that increases the state income tax, but they also are now putting these people in a union, and the union can take that money, the union dues, and pay it into a political party to support their candidates.I wrote a letter to nine governors, including California and New York yesterday, demanding they no longer allow Medicaid money, federal money, to go directly into a pension fund of a union or to union dues.

That's not allowed anymore.And those are the kinds of decisions that we've got to make as a nation.That doesn't sound right.It doesn't meet the sniff test.It happens to be illegal.

I mean, sorry, my mind is just a little blown right here.So you're saying Medicaid moneyinto pensions for unions and Medicaid is supposed to go to those who cannot afford medical care?

If you are employing people in the Medicaid program, personal care service workers, for example, the ones carrying the groceries upstairs, and they're getting paid by the federal government, the unions are coming and unionizing those workers and saying, now that you're a member of the union, you've got to pay union dues.And so they're saying, why don't you just have Medicaid, Washington, just directly pay the union for the union dues that you owe us?You're not allowed to do that, and we're stopping it.But some states have allowed that to happen, and I believe it's political patronage.Because once you get those union dues into the union, they can use it for whatever they want.They can put it in the pension.

They can also put it in the political action committee and support candidates.And as you know, they tend to support one party more than the other.

Yes, they do.Well, amazing stuff.And I understand you've had huge progress in billing providers and also not doing Medicaid payments to people who are engaging in fraud.So well done.40 percent increase, 500 percent increase.Well done, Dr. Oz.

You are on the case.Thank you so much.