NEW YORK – The US Department of Justice said Tuesday that a Texas doctor has been sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison and to pay more than $34 million in restitution for his role in a medical fraud scheme.
According to the government, Daniel Canchola of Flower Mound, Texas, defrauded Medicare by prescribing durable medical equipment (DME) and cancer genetic testing without seeing or treating the patients for which it was ordered.
From August 2018 to April 2019, Canchola received roughly $30 in exchange for each doctor's order he signed, for a total of more than $466,000 in kickbacks. The orders he signed were used to submit more than $54 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare.
The Medicare beneficiaries for whom Canchola wrote orders were targeted by telemarketing campaigns and at health fairs and were induced to undergo cancer genetic testing and to receive the DME regardless of medical necessity.
In October 2022, Canchola pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to commit wire fraud.