A Miami federal grand jury recently indicted two people on charges they were paying kickbacks to Medicaid beneficiaries to generate business for their mental health counseling clinic in Doral.
According to the indictment, Lorena Osella, 43 owned Lighthouse Community Center, LLC, which purported to offer psychosocial rehabilitation (PSR) services, a type of mental health counseling to help people with depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. It’s alleged that between May 2020 and at least January 2021, she and Juan Luis Matos, 58, paid bribes to register Medicaid beneficiaries as patients to receive PSR services via telemedicine that either were medically unnecessary or that were not billed as provided.
According to the indictment, patients generally received a kickback of $400 in exchange for receiving PSR services. As a result of submitting these fraudulent claims, Medicaid made nearly $1 million in payments to Lighthouse. It’s alleged that Osella and Matos then used the proceeds for their personal benefit.
