With its latest announcement this week of a criminal crackdown of 21 defendants for their alleged participation in various health care related fraud schemes, DOJ has underscored its commitment to aggressively pursue individuals and companies alleged to have exploited the COVID-19 pandemic. Among these actions are a collection involving alleged billing fraud arising from COVID testing; one set of defendants is alleged to have taken the data from patients seeking COVID tests and submitting bills to the federal healthcare programs for office visits that never occurred, while another set of actions involve obtaining patient samples and then billing for more expensive lab tests. Still others involve defendants alleged to have sold fake COVID vaccination cards. (more…)