Lab Operator Convicted in $4 Million Medicare Fraud Scheme

Sherif Khalil was convicted for his role in defrauding Medicare of over $4 million in fraudulent claims for medically unnecessary urine drug testing, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

According to the DOJ, Khalil operated Spectra Clinical Labs, a toxicology lab in Gardena, Calif., and implemented a scheme to pay marketers a percentage of Medicare reimbursements to obtain doctors’ orders for expensive drug testing panels. He concealed these payments by routing them through nominally independent marketing companies he secretly controlled. The marketers then trained staff at doctors’ offices to send Spectra orders for unnecessary urine drug tests that doctors did ...