A FILIPINO American nurse is under house arrest, after she was indicted by a grand jury in Texas, USA, for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and health care fraud.
According to a ruling by the United States District Court in the Southern District of Texas, Marizel Yukee and her co-conspirators “targeted elderly Medicare beneficiaries, many of whom were terminally ill in hospice care and caused medically unnecessary amniotic wound allografts to be applied to these vulnerable individuals.”
An allograft is a human tissue transplant procedure where the donor and recipient are genetically dissimilar.
Yukee “also paid illegal kickbacks and bribes to providers to induce patient referrals for allograft applications and received illegal kickbacks and bribes from allograft distributors in exchange for purchasing allografts billed to federal health care programs,” the June 18 ruling read.
The court found that Yukee and her co-conspirators submitted more than $906 million in “false and fraudulent claims to Medicare and TRICARE for these medically unnecessary allografts and associated services” from October 2023 to April 2026.
“Medicare and TRICARE paid more than approximately $297 million based on these claims. Through her four clinics, the Defendant submitted an average of over $1 million in claims per Medicare beneficiary for allografts,” it said.
Yukee profited from tens of millions of dollars, $4.6 million of which funded the construction of a beach resort in the Philippines, the court ruled.
She also was able to buy several high-end vehicles including a $594,000 Ferrari 296 GTS and a $158,000 Cadillac Escalade, luxury jewelry, including a $865,000 Bulgari necklace; and real estate, including a million-dollar home in Hawaii.
The indictment said Yukee and her co-conspirators amassed a fortune by, among other things, submitting and causing the submission of false and fraudulent claims to Medicare and TRICARE for items and services that were “medically unreasonable and unnecessary, ineligible for reimbursement and procured through illegal kickbacks.”
They also submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare that falsely represented the provider’s actual acquisition cost of allografts.
According to Houston Public Media, Yukee, a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, was arrested in Houston, Texas.
She pleaded not guilty to all charges and was sent to home detention.
US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Mehmet Oz said his agency and the US Department of Justice ended her “lavish lifestyle and defrauding of beneficiaries.”
