On April 4, 2019, in a 32-page indictment, the government indicted two defendants—Darin Flashberg and Najib Jabbour—for conspiracy, 18 U.S.C. § 371, and violations of the Anti-kickback Statute, 42 U.C.C § 1320a-7b(b)(2)(B). Flashberg and Jabbor owned or operated multiple durable medical equipment (DME) companies. The government alleged that they paid kickbacks to certain unnamed companies in return for prescriptions and other supporting documents used to bill Medicare for DME products. The doctors who issued those documents allegedly did so regardless of medical necessity and without an adequate doctor-patient relationship, often just based on a telephone call. The kickbacks were disguised as marketing services. According to the indictment, CMS had suspended payment to one of the DME companies, Qual Med, based in part on Qual Med’s failure to comply with Medicare’s telemedicine regulations by failing to use interactive video or audio.
A sealed plea agreement was entered on September 1, 2020; the trial is set for February 23, 2021.
