AURORA, Colo. (AP) - A suburban Denver man has been sentenced to 16 years in federal prison and ordered to pay restitution for a scheme that bilked the government out of millions of dollars.
The Aurora Sentinel reports 61-year-old Joseph Prince, a former case manager for a specialized Veteran’s Health Administration program, was sentenced Thursday for the scheme he carried out with family and friends from the summer of 2017 through the middle of 2018.
Prince, of Aurora, worked as a beneficiary specialist at a Denver call center for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Spina Bifida Health Care Benefits Program, which provides medical care for the children of certain veterans of the Vietnam and Korean wars who were born with the spinal birth defect.
Prosecutors say he referred about 45 people in the program to five home health providers, and the VA paid about $19 million to cover the patients’ health care costs. Prince received $1.5 million in kickback benefits for his referrals.
But the home health providers were shell organizations run by Prince’s friends and family members, including his wife, brother-in-law and half-sister. They were not authorized care providers by the VA.
At least three of Prince’s friends have pleaded guilty to paying illegal gratuities and are set to be sentenced this month.
Prince was ordered to pay more than $18.7 million in restitution to the VA.
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