Miami, likely home of the 2012 NBA
champions, is also the Medicare fraud capital of the United States.
In
this
article about two recent fraud convicts, the brother and nephew of
columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner, it is noted that a few years ago, one fourth
of Medicare’s physical and occupational therapy claims
from the entire United States were coming from south Florida.
Some of the perpetrators are Cuban
Americans who fled to Cuba once the feds started after them. (Montaner père
fled to Costa Rica, with bad results.) That
fact has given rise to allegations, with no evidence offered, that Medicare
fraud is in fact a Castro Regime Scheme to steal U.S. government money and to
discredit the Cuban American community.
The situation gets more
interesting with the case of Oscar Sanchez, who has been arrested and indicted
on one count of money laundering by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District
of Florida.
Sanchez, it is alleged, didn’t himself
defraud Medicare but rather helped those who did by laundering their profits
and sending millions to bank accounts in Cuba.
The U.S. Attorney
told
the Herald, “There is no allegation and we have no evidence that the Cuban
government is involved in this case.”
A
Cuban official, not addressing this case directly,
told
the AP: “Foreign commercial banks that maintain accounts in Cuban banks are
obliged to operate in strict compliance with international and Cuban rules and
must guarantee the reliability of their transactions and the correct use of
their accounts.”
Sanchez, it turns out, was quite
an operator.
The only detailed
information about this case is contained in a
motion
that prosecutors made to convince the judge to hold Sanchez in jail because
he would likely flee if released on bail.
The narrative presented in the motion is incomplete and not entirely
clear, but prosecutors allege that Sanchez:
·
worked for and was paid commissions by a number
of persons who committed Medicare fraud, laundering their money;
·
a) by providing them cash in return for checks
drawn on the companies involved in the fraud; or
·
b) in other cases involving “individuals who
wanted their cash in Cuba,” by moving their money to Cuba by sending it first
to a bank in Montreal, then to accounts at Republic Bank in Trinidad, which
accounts were opened at the bank’s Havana branch and “at least two of those
accounts had standing instructions to the bank to wire all money immediately
from the accounts to the Cuban banking system.”
At that point, prosecutors say
that “the final whereabouts of the money is unknown.” I assume that they use the term “the Cuban
banking system” because they have no information on accounts to which the funds
were transferred.
We can also assume that this case may
lead to conversations and perhaps collaboration between U.S. prosecutors and
Cuban officials. Such collaboration has
occurred in cases involving alien smuggling and drug trafficking, and has
helped obtain convictions in U.S. courts.
U.S. allies also collaborate with Cuban law enforcement regardless of
their view of Cuba’s human rights record.
In the interest of fighting rampant Medicare fraud, it would certainly
serve the U.S. national interests to seek Cuban cooperation in this case.
Of course, it’s possible that the
Cuban Americans involved in Medicare fraud are really working for the Castro
Regime.
It’s equally possible that they
flee to Cuba because they figure they will be safe from extradition there. That’s not entirely true because Cuba has handed
over several fugitives from U.S. justice in recent years. But it’s in our interest to fight that
perception, and we can’t do it from a distance.
