Former doctor sentenced to 6 years in federal prison for $20 million health care fraud scheme

A district judge has sentenced Dr. Richard Davidson, 42, of Delray Beach, to six years in federal prison for conspiracy to commit health care fraud. As part of his sentence, the court ordered Davidson to forfeit around $650,000 in funds traceable to the offense or as substitute assets. The court also entered a money judgment of $2.47 million and ordered $10.72 million in restitution.

Davidson lost his medical license due to his conviction. He pleaded guilty on Sept. 16, 2020.

According to court documents, in 2018, Davidson and his conspirators established a conglomerate of durable medical equipment supply companies. During the creation of the companies, they lied to Medicare to secure billing privileges. The scheme involved placing the companies in the names of straw owners. By concealing the companies’ true ownership, the conspirators secretly gained control of multiple companies. This enabled the conspirators to submit high volumes of illegal DME claims while attempting to evade law enforcement scrutiny. In one year, through the conglomerate, Davidson and his conspirators submitted more than $20 million in illegal DME claims, resulting in more than $10 million in payments from Medicare and the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

To attain such high volumes of claims, the conspirators used bribes and kickbacks. Specifically, Davidson and his conspirators illegally purchased thousands of DME claims from so-called “marketers,” who generated the claims under the guise of “telemedicine” when no telemedicine had actually occurred. Instead, the “marketers” had bribed doctors to sign the DME brace orders that supported the claims. Davidson and his conspirators paid millions to secure the illegal DME claims for submission to Medicare and CHAMPVA.