State agents said a Winter Park clinic was billing Medicaid for millions of dollars in treatments that never happened.
The clinic’s owner, Janie Vittini, was arrested Wednesday.
Agents said Vittini led a lifestyle so lavish it would make anyone jealous.
Wednesday morning’s raid on her Improving Together clinic in Winter Park surprised neighboring business owners who talked with Channel 9’s Mark Joyella.
http://liarcatchers.com/fraud_investigation.html
Investigators said Vittini wasn’t giving her patients a whole lot in exchange for their valuable Medicaid information.
According to investigators, Medicaid recipients were offered gift cards in exchange for taking some of their personal information.
Agents said that information was used to make millions of dollars in bogus Medicaid claims.
“We arrested the ringleader of a scheme today based out of here, Orange County, Florida,” said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Wednesday afternoon.
Vittini’s business was based out of a storefront on Aloma Avenue in Winter Park. It was a business that other business operators in the shopping center said has long been a bit of a mystery.
“I never got a solid answer from anybody about what was going on in there, ever,” said Josh Shapiro, who runs a business in the shopping center.
The company’s website says Improving Together’s goal “is to provide mental health case management to adults and children.”
State investigators said, in reality, the business did far less work on clients and far more billing Medicaid.
They said the business sent in Medicaid claims designed to improve one thing: Vittini’s bottom line.
“This was a fairly blatant scheme by Ms. Vittini. She basically was billing for services not rendered,” said Jim Varnado, who heads up the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit for the attorney general.
Agents said the company offered Medicaid recipients gift cards in exchange for Medicaid information used to make claims.
They said Vittini spent the money she pulled in on luxury SUVs, vacations and cruises and they said she spent $175,000 on leather bags and products from French fashion house Louis Vuitton.
“She was living a lavish lifestyle at the expense of taxpayers,” said Bondi.
Agents say the Vittini was spending money so fast they had to move Wednesday to shut down her business in the hopes of recovering some taxpayer money.
