Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney Blog

Although Southern California healthcare fraud is an enormous and perennial problem – witness the massive Armenian Mafia Medicare scam story that broke in October 2010 – the city of Miami, Florida remains the “national epicenter for Medicare fraud,” according to a story in the AP from five days ago.

The latest big breaking Medicare scam involves the drug Arformoterol, an emphysema and bronchitis drug. The Department of Health and Human Services reports that, over a year-and-a-half long period, Miami-Dade County healthcare providers paid out $34 million for drugs that should have only cost about $3.7 million. Medicare paid for 7 million units but only received 750,000 units. The fraud, which totaled more than $30 million, sounds like a big deal. But $30 million is peanuts compared with the total Medicare fraud committed annually in Miami – “roughly $3 billion,” according to the AP.

The arformoterol overbilling scheme is just one of dozens of similar scams recently perpetrated by technically savvy crooks. According to the AP, “The spike in arformoterol only came after authorities tried to crack down on another inhaler drug… as authorities have caught onto one scam, crooks have moved on to another, such as by shifting from durable medical equipment and HIV drug scams to physical therapy and home healthcare fraud.”

Organizations like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have tried to tamp down on problems like Southern California credit card fraud, dental fraud, insurance fraud, and healthcare fraud. But Los Angeles white collar crimes continue to drain much needed resources from state and national coffers.

If you or someone you love and care about has been charged with Los Angeles healthcare fraud, dental fraud, or chiropractic fraud – or any other kind of white collar crime – you may be scared, confused, and disorganized. How should you prepare your defense? What will happen if you get convicted? What if you did commit the crime? What if you accidentally got involved in a criminal enterprise by partnering with an unscrupulous partner or by failing to adhere to regulations that you didn’t even know existed?

These questions are important, especially in the light of the fact that prosecutors can hit you with multiple charges according to complicated California laws, such as Penal Code Section 550, Insurance Code Section 1871.4, Penal Code Section 3700, and Penal Code Section 118.

To find a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who has the wherewithal, specialized knowledge, and track record to serve defendants like you should be your top priority. Look to Mr. Michael Kraut of Los Angeles’ Kraut Law Group. Mr. Kraut is Harvard Law School educated, so he has the intelligence and training to provide a top caliber defense even in complicated fraud matters. He also has an exceptional track record getting his defendants good results, and he uses his many key relationships to resolve nagging legal issues effectively and fluidly. His goal is to help his clients put their charges behind them and rebuild their lives and professional credentials.

Everyone and his mother knows not to drive a fire truck while DUI in Glendale. But a South Dakota volunteer firefighter, Scott Johnson, was pulled over on Labor Day weekend for driving his fire truck while under the influence. Last week, a local jury in Madison, SD, found the 43 year old guilty after deliberating for only 45 minutes. Those who’ve recently come under suspicion for DUI in Glendale, driving under the influence in Burbank, Los Angeles DUI, or DUI in Pasadena can learn a lot from the story of Johnson’s arrest and punishment.

According to local reports, Johnson had been drinking at a local bar while working as a bouncer. After the bar closed, Johnson returned home. He then received a distress call at around 2.30 a.m. He hopped in his truck and drove out to see what happened. It was a false alarm. But a police officer who had seen him drinking at the bar earlier saw him driving his truck. He grew concerned because he had seen Johnson consume so much alcohol. So he followed the volunteer back to the station and subjected him to field sobriety tests and a blood test. Johnson’s BAC level registered 0.098%, above the Southern California (and South Dakota) legal limit of 0.08%. Pursuant to his conviction for DUI last Tuesday, Johnson may face a year behind bars or a fine of $2000. He is scheduled to be sentenced on the 3rd of January.

Individuals like Johnson who are suspected of DUI in Burbank will be asked to take chemical tests like the breathalyzer. This test, also known as a PAS test, will be administered by an officer through a handheld device. Ostensibly, the breathalyzer notes how much alcohol is concentrated in the breath and uses that number to extrapolate a suspect’s blood alcohol concentration. According to California Vehicle Code Section 23152(b), if you drive a motor vehicle with a BAC of greater than 0.08% in Glendale, you can be arrested and charged with DUI.

The problem is that flaws abound with Glendale breathalyzer tests:

• The courts have only recently allowed PAS test results to be used as evidence because of the many potential flaws and complications.
• The PAS test does not distinguish between a woman and a man – and research shows that men and women process alcohol very differently.
• A machine can yield a “false positive,” even if you haven’t been drinking ethanol, if you’ve been exposed to other chemicals that the device is sensitive to.
• The amount of food you ate before having alcohol, whether or not you are diabetic, whether or not the machine was properly calibrated, administered and interpreted, and so on can all influence the validity of the PAS test results.

All that being said, challenging a positive breathalyzer test is both an art and a science. An experienced Glendale DUI defense attorney, like Michael Kraut, can help you understand how to battle back against your Los Angeles DUI charge to either get the charges dismissed or to plea bargain them down to more reduced and palatable penalties.

Connect with the Harvard Law School educated Kraut for help with your Glendale DUI at 818-507-9123, or set an appointment to stop in at the local office: 450 North Brand Boulevard, Suite 600, Glendale, California 91203.

Continue reading " Glendale DUI News Shocks Local Firefighters; Story of South Dakota Firefighter Driving Truck While DUI Elicits Condemnation from Local Responders " »

The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Bloomberg News and other major media services are reporting on an enormous Los Angeles medical fraud (and elsewhere) settlement involving three pharmaceutical firms: Abbott Laboratories, B. Braun Medical of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Roxane Laboratories of Columbus, Ohio. All told, the $420+ million settlement stemmed from a whistleblower charge pursuant to the False Claims Act.

Essentially, the drug companies overinflated their benchmark pricing to government insurers. In other words, they gave pharmacies and doctors a discounted price, and then they inflated how much the drugs cost and passed that difference onto the taxpayers. This illegal inflation became so well known that the benchmark -- called the Average Wholesale Price (AWP) -- soon became known among everyone in the industry as “ain’t what’s paid.” A spokesman for the Justice Department put it bluntly: “The only persons who paid the inflated, reported drug price were you, the American taxpayers.”

Cases of medical, dental, and chiropractic fraud, insurance fraud, credit card fraud, and other Southern California white collar crimes are significant and troubling. But the typical local cases pale in comparison with the national Medicare and Medicaid schemes unraveled by the Justice Department recently. Here is a quick recap of a few jaw dropping settlements:

2001 – TAP Pharmaceutical Products paid out $875 million pursuant to charges that the drug giant had conspired with physicians to cheat Medicare.

2003 – Abbott Labs (yes, the same Abbott that agreed to pay $126.5 million as part of this latest suit) paid out $614 million pursuant to a government crack down on the drug giant’s Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement policies.

January 2009 – Drug giant Eli Lilly settled for $1.4 billion pursuant to charges regarding bad marketing practices of the drug Zyprexa, a common antipsychotic medication.

September 2009 – Drug giant Pfizer paid an unbelievable $2.9 billion pursuant to charges that the company violated marketing rules for 13 drugs, including the anti-inflammatory Bextra.

If you or someone you care about has been hit with a charge of Los Angeles medical fraud, dental fraud, chiropractic fraud or any other white collar crime, even if you didn’t cause billions of dollars worth of damages, prosecutors can exact quite a toll on your life and business. If convicted of these crimes, you could face jail time, the loss of your medical or other professional license, serious fines and forced restitution to those you have cheated, including insurance companies and the government, and a torpedoing of your professional reputation.

Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Michael Kraut of Hollywood’s Kraut Law Group has the skills, relationships, resources, and intelligence to handle your complicated white collar crime case. As a former prosecutor who has been on the other side of many criminal trials (14 plus years as a Deputy DA), the Harvard Law School trained Attorney Kraut can give you the guidance you need.

Let’s face it: Getting charged and convicted of a Southern California DUI can ruin your day and radically alter your life’s course. Thus, it’s not surprising that defendants charged with crimes like DUI in Pasadena, DUI in Burbank, Glendale DUI, or Los Angeles DUI resort to contrivances to protect their freedom and avoid trouble. Often, prosecutors can break down bizarre and nonsensical defenses easily, but a recent acquittal out of Missouri has many experts in Southern California and across the nation scratching their heads and engaging in heated debates in internet forums.

Drinking to Keep Warm??

A Missouri man, Thomas Drummond, got acquitted of charge of Missouri DUI last week based on the argument that he had been drinking “to keep warm” in the wake of an accident. According to reports, Drummond had been driving near Jackson, Missouri, when his truck slipped off an icy road into a culvert. Panicked, the man text messaged his girlfriend on a dying cell phone and alerted to her his predicament. He then opened a bottle of brandy he had stored in his car and began drinking the alcohol to “stay warm” until authorities could help him out of the ditch. When the police finally showed up at 4 a.m., they found Drummond “unresponsive” and tested him via a breathalyzer. His BAC tested at 0.148% – nearly twice the Southern California DUI legal limit of 0.08%, as defined by California Vehicle Code Section 23152(b).

Drummond claimed that he had not drunk before he got into the crash, so he should not be hit with the DUI. After a jury in Cape Girardeau County heard testimony from five witnesses, the DUI charge against him was dropped.

Drummond is not the first person to make this “I got drunk to stay warm” defense. Joe Giudice, one of the stars on Real Housewives of New Jersey (on Bravo), claimed that one night, after flipping over his truck, he consumed several shots of whisky to still his nerves. By the time the police arrived, he was clearly under the influence. But Giudice did not make out as well as Drummond did. His DUI cost him $864 on top of a one-year driver’s license revocation and 30 days of community service.

Of course, this kind of defense is far less likely to occur in Los Angeles, where temperatures rarely if ever dip below 40 degrees, even in the dead of winter. Another thing to remember: drinking alcohol “to stay warm” can actually precipitate serious medical problems, including hypothermia. Consumption of alcohol will dilate your blood vessels, meaning that the warm blood at your core will rush to your extremities. This explains why drinking gives you a feeling of being “flushed.” And while that flush may feel good and may feel like it’s helping, that heat is coming from somewhere – the inside of your body. What this means is that your body is more rapidly cooling off – potentially a fatal development if you are in seriously dire straits on the side of a cold road somewhere.

In any event, if you face a charge of DUI in Los Angeles, your best strategy is to connect with a lawyer who can provide crucial guidance. Look to Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Michael Kraut, a Harvard Law School educated lawyer with a terrific track record and excellent reviews both from past clients and from his legal peers. As a former prosecutor (14 years working for the city), Attorney Kraut has the skills, wherewithal, and resources to deliver superior and effective representation.