OKLAHOMA CITY – Two Oklahomans are among nearly 500 people across the nation implicated in health care fraud and illegal drug diversion schemes that involved the submission of more than $14.6 billion in alleged false billings and more than 15.6 million pills of illegally diverted controlled substances.
The U.S. Justice Department’s “2025 National Health Care Fraud Takedown” resulted in criminal charges against 324 individuals, including 96 doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and other licensed medical professionals in 50 federal districts and 12 state Attorneys General offices across the United States.
The government seized more than $245 million in cash, luxury vehicles, cryptocurrency and other assets as part of the coordinated enforcement efforts, “demonstrating a significant return on investment that results from health-care fraud enforcement efforts,” officials said.
An additional 170 defendants were involved in various health care fraud schemes, allegedly involving over $1.84 billion in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies for diagnostic testing, medical visits and treatments that were medically unnecessary, provided in connection with kickbacks and bribes, or never provided at all.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that it successfully prevented more than $4 billion from being paid on false and fraudulent claims, and that it suspended or revoked the billing privileges of 205 providers in the months leading up to the “Takedown.”
Civil charges against 20 defendants for $14.2 million in alleged fraud, as well as civil settlements with 106 defendants totaling $34.3 million, were also announced as part of the investigation.
Alexander Frank, 55, of Oklahoma City, was indicted last month in Oklahoma City’s Western District federal court on 25 counts of health care fraud arising from the investigation Frank is a licensed medical doctor who, since April 2012, was employed full-time by Long Term Care Specialists, an Oklahoma Citybased corporation that hired doctors to provide health care to residents at skilled nursing facilities and assisted living centers in Oklahoma.
In addition to his job with LTCS, Frank was hired by dozens of skilled nursing facilities and assisted living centers to serve as their “medical director,” typically for a monthly fee, the indictment relates. As medical director, his duties were to “assist a facility in supervising its medical staff and ensure that its residents received quality care.”
The indictment alleges that in 2021, 2022 and the first four months of 2023, Frank submitted to Medicare 33,063 claims for face-to-face visits with beneficiaries in skilled nursing facilities which he did not actually provide or rendered only in part. Those fraudulent claims totaled more than $3 million in billings, the indictment alleges.
Frank submitted 72 claims to Medicare for face-to-face services he claimed he provided in one day, Feb. 10, 2022. That single day’s claims “would have amounted to more than 35 hours of face-to-face visits with beneficiaries” who lived in “numerous facilities throughout Oklahoma,” including Durant, Wewoka, Broken Bow, McAlester and Eufaula – and those hours did not include his travel time among those communities, prosecutors noted.
In 2022, Frank submitted 16,897 claims to insurers for medical services that cumulatively amounted to 8,372 hours of face-to-face visits – “an average of 161 hours every week and 23 hours every day of the year,” the indictment charges.
In one case, Frank claimed to have provided face-to-face services to a Medicare recipient at a nursing home in Lawton on June 21, 2021. However, on that date the patient was in a local hospital, not in the nursing home.
Frank also submitted claims for face-to-face services provided to beneficiaries “who had died before the purported date of service.”
For example, Frank claimed to have treated “A.S.” at a Lawton nursing home on Nov. 5, 2022. He billed Medicare $382.48 for “the comprehensive assessment of and care planning for” the patient who had “a cognitive impairment like dementia.” However, A.S. died on June 30, 2022 – more than four months earlier – the indictment relates.
If convicted, Frank faces up to 10 years in prison on each count, a $250,000 fine, and mandatory restitution. He was released from custody on a $20,000 unsecured bond, pending his next appearance in court.
Ladd Clayton Atkins, 50, of Tulsa, was charged in Tulsa’s Northern Oklahoma District federal court with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance unlawfully as a registrant, and conspiracy to commit health care fraud in connection with a scheme to unlawfully prescribe controlled substances and defraud Medicaid and/or Medicaid.
It is alleged that Atkins, an osteopath, “knowingly, intentionally, and willfully conspired, confederated, and agreed with others” to unlawfully prescribe Adderall, a Schedule II controlled substance, and to defraud health care benefit programs.
The Northern District of Oklahoma “worked with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, the Office of the Inspector General for Homeland Security Investigations, and the Drug Enforcement Administration to investigate this case,” said U.S. Attorney Clint Johnson.
Oklahoma Western District U.S. Attorney Robert J. Troester said that the June 30 nationwide announcement “is proof of the Department of Justice’s ongoing effort to protect Americans from those who seek to exploit government programs for their personal gain.”
Fraud targeted programs serving elderly, disabled The 324 defendants allegedly defrauded programs entrusted for the care of the elderly and disabled to “line their own pockets,” investigators and prosecutors said.
The “Takedown” involved federal and state law enforcement agencies across the country and represents an unprecedented effort to combat health care fraud schemes that exploit patients and taxpayers.
The Takedown project was led and coordinated by the Health Care Fraud Unit of the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and its core partners from U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The cases were investigated by agents from federal and state law enforcement agencies. The cases are being prosecuted by Health Care Fraud Strike Force teams from the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, 50 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices nationwide, and 12 State Attorneys General Offices.
Prior to the charges announced in Operation Takedown, and since its inception in March 2007, the Health Care Fraud Strike Force, which operates in 27 districts, filed charges against more than 5,400 defendants who collectively billed Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurers more than $27 billion.