Wolchek investigation leads to multi-million dollar Medicare bust

Back in 2012, FOX 2's Rob Wolchek started investigating a shady home home health care operation. What he stumbled on was a major medicare fraud ring and federal investigation.

Three years later, more than 50 have been convicted and a multi-million dollar crime ring is out of business.

These crooks found a whole bunch of ways to make money. They lined up patients for bogus home health care visits then billed the taxpayers.

They billed the government for prescription drugs then turned around and sold those drugs on the street. 

They were all brought down, however, by U.S. Attorneys Terrance Haugabook and Wayne Pratt. Together, they just secured 52 convictions in a massive home health care fraud case that was robbing the U.S. government of tens of millions of dollars.

One name you may remember is Sardar Ashrafkhan. Back in 2012, he was tied to Problem Solver investigation.

Rob Wolchek spent almost a year of watching a suspicious group of doctors and people who claimed they were doctors out of a Tory Clinic. As Rob watched, he never saw any patients head into the clinic. 

Telemarketers would cold-call seniors and try to set up home doctor visits. Then, a "doctor" would call on the patient. However, no real examination would go on and the medicare information would be transferred. 

Apparently this type of crime was rampant a few years ago. The U.S. Attorneys say along with the home visits, recruiters were rounding up seniors and having parties where medical info was exchanged with hired gun doctors.

In his story, he confronted the people at the telemarketing business, a home visiting doctor, people at a pharmacy tied to the group and busted a man posing as a doctor.

That story won Rob Wolchek the Michigan Association of Broadcasters Award for Best Investigation in 2012. That's good, but the feds one-upped him. They used some of the people Rob met to secure convictions from the top of the operations down to the dealers selling the prescriptions.

CLICK HERE to watch Rob Wolchek's original investigation.

Sentencing for all those convicted is expected to wrap up in November of this year.