Taxable Talk

I’ve mentioned previously that if you fail to report illegal income on your tax return, you’re guilty of tax evasion. Yes, illegal income is just as taxable as legal income. This came into play with an ongoing investigation in Southern California.

It seems some medical practitioners came up with the idea of getting denizens of Skid Row into hospitals for unnecessary medical procedures. Dr. Ovid Mercene of La Mirada was one of the individuals involved in the practice. I’ll let the DOJ press release take it from here:

From 2008 and 2012, while Mercene worked at a Los Angeles-area hospital, he admitted patients, the vast majority of whom were homeless, who had been referred from a purported “care consortium.” The patients, many of whom did not require hospitalization, were admitted for the purpose of defrauding taxpayer-funded health programs such as Medicare, Mercene admitted in court today.

Mercene admitted the “patients” after watching them being transported by van from Skid Row to the hospital, where they were often kept on a special floor away from the hospital’s “regular” patients. These “patients” also were given smoking breaks while in the hospital, even though many of them supposedly suffered from respiratory diseases. After a short hospital stay where numerous unnecessary tests were typically performed, Mercene discharged the “patients” to skilled nursing facilities, even though they did not require such care.

Dr. Mercene received almost $700,000 in kickbacks. Somehow that income didn’t make it onto his tax returns. While I suspect the alleged health care fraud can be prosecuted under various statutes, the government had an easier charge (to prosecute) to make against Dr. Mercene: tax evasion. That’s what he pleaded guilty to last week. He’ll be sentenced next July.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 15th, 2013 at 7:41 pm and is filed under California, Tax Evasion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.