Lavaca man sentenced to 15 years for health care fraud

Billy Joe Taylor of Lavaca, Ark., was sentenced Thursday (June 8) to 15 years in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $29.835 million in restitution for numerous charges related to health care fraud and money laundering.

Taylor, 44, was initially charged in May 2021 with the fraud scheme in May as part of charges against 14 defendants in seven U.S. federal districts for their alleged participation in the fraudulent schemes.

“Taylor and his co-conspirators obtained medical information and private personal information for Medicare beneficiaries, and then misused that confidential information to repeatedly submit claims to Medicare for diagnostic tests. According to court documents, Taylor and his co-conspirators received more than $38 million from Medicare on those fraudulent claims,” noted a Thursday statement from the office of U.S. Attorney David Fowlkes for the Western District of Arkansas.

A federal grand jury in the Western District of Arkansas indicted Taylor in late 2021 with health care fraud in connection with over $100 million dollars in false billings for urine drug testing, COVID-19 testing, and other clinical laboratory services. Taylor, the owner and operator of Vitas Laboratories and Beach Tox, controlled and directed multiple diagnostic laboratories, and used those labs to submit more than $100 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare.

The indictment alleged that Taylor obtained medical information and private personal information for Medicare beneficiaries, and then misused that confidential information to repeatedly submit claims to Medicare for diagnostic tests that were not ordered by medical providers and were not actually performed by the laboratories.

Taylor was charged with 16 counts of health care fraud, and one count of engaging in a monetary transaction in criminally derived property. Each of the counts is punishable by a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.