frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

CEO of Health Care Software Company Sentenced for $1B Fraud Conspiracy

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ceo-health-care-software-company-sentenced-1b-fraud-conspiracy
64•healsdata•4h ago

Comments

AndrewKemendo•2h ago
I mean that’s pretty unabashed good news. I’m probably the most cynical person that comments regularly and I’ll take it!

It’s something at least.

Cipater•2h ago
You're nowhere near the most cynical peron here if your first thought wasn't "how long till he gets pardoned"?
atmavatar•1h ago
My first thought was that the guy was required to pay back less than half of what was stolen.

From there, of course, it's a short hop to "he has more than enough money left over to purchase himself a pardon."

wombatpm•1h ago
Recent reports say the going price is a million
perihelions•26m ago
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-presidential-pardo... ("Inside the New Fast Track to a Presidential Pardon" / "Lobbyists close to Trump say their going rate to advocate for a pardon is $1 million")
Nevermark•1h ago
Well if he wasn't already contributing some percentage to the "right" people ahead of time, and saying the "right" things ("autism, something, something, vaccines, something something, persecution, ..."), he wasn't very good at what he did.

Despite the great post-sentencing opportunities for monetary re-justicing, insurance still works better when paid for up front.

exabrial•2h ago
> An Arizona man was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $452 million in restitution for conspiring to defraud Medicare and other federal health care benefit programs of more than $1 billion by operating a platform that generated false doctors’ orders used to support fraudulent claims for various medical items.

I wish all headlines read like this instead of "here's why you should be scared"

lixtra•2h ago
As you would expect from a state press release, not a tabloid publication.
hermannj314•2h ago
Does polymarket let you bet on when Trump pardons this guy?
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS•2h ago
Couldn't you go find out yourself? Or was your purpose to score some internet points with a snarky political jab?
garyfirestorm•2h ago
Is it a ‘snarky political jab’ if it is highly likely to happen irl?
hermannj314•2h ago
It is a snarky political jab.

President Trump loves to pardon white collar criminals in exchange for donations. It is his whole thing and well documented.

wombatpm•1h ago
The donations to his Presidential library are a scam. I’ve made this prediction elsewhere. I am 99% confident that the Trump Presidential Library will not be build during his lifetime. Further,I am 50 year old nonsmoker and I am 85% confident the Trump Presidential Library will not be built in my lifetime.

I also expect the new East Wing Ballroom will not be built this term and the donations will mysteriously disappear with the next administration.

gregjw•2h ago
It's funny when people are more upset about being called out than seeing the person they voted in do absurd things again and again.
nutjob2•1h ago
I guess you've never heard of a rhetorical question.

But speaking of snark why are you so upset? Trump has form pardoning people for purely political reasons and for personal gain of various kinds.

rdtsc•2h ago
It's your great chance to win big money! You should bet on it!
rdtsc•2h ago
> The fraudulent doctors’ orders generated by DMERx falsely represented that a doctor had examined and treated the Medicare beneficiaries when, in fact, purported telemedicine companies paid doctors to sign the orders without regard to medical necessity

They'll get doctors as well? Hopefully they are part of the co-conspirators group they mentioned they convicted at the start. Criminals are going to be criminal, but it's especially disheartening when doctors engage in this. All those years going to school should be canceled and thrown into the trash immediately if they get convicted of these kinds of crimes. The path of ever being a doctor should be closed for them.

OutOfHere•1h ago
The problem here is not the doctors. It is billing it to government insurance. Doctors should remain free to gratify patients who are willing to pay cash rather than bill to government insurance. In fact, most such gratifications never have a problem for precisely this reason.
burkesquires•2h ago
I think fraudsters should have to work off the money they stole at prison wages…punishments are supposed to be deterent and prevent people from commingting crime…don’t seal a billion dollars becasue IF you get caught you will have to pay back half is not a deterent…BUT if they have to pay off a billion dollars at 13-52 cents/hour…that is a deterent!
inamberclad•1h ago
I'd like to see a prison sentence for corporations.
x3n0ph3n3•1h ago
I'd like to see the death penalty (dissolution) for them.
llmslave2•48m ago
How would that work. Would the employees be banned from working together again or something?
saghm•31m ago
The corporation would be terminated, all of its copyrights and trademarks would be nullified, and the assets seized. If investors want to try to spend their money on building the exact same thing again under a different name after those losses, that's their perogatice. I suspect that after a few of these occurrences they might start to get cagey about whether they want to give money to someone who's had this happen before though.
free_bip•1h ago
I wouldn't want to see that. That's called slavery!

And no, the severity of the crime does not (IMHO) justify it.

empiko•58m ago
Just to play devil's advocate, you're okay with forcing a criminal to sit in a room for the rest of their life, but you're not okay if they also have to work for society during that timeframe. What is the main argument why the first case is okay and the second is not.
llmslave2•49m ago
Probably for the same reason that it's generally seen as less intrusive to prevent someone from doing something, compared to forcing them to do something.
vincnetas•41m ago
thats why for some prison systems main goal is not punishment but rehabilitation. i think this is scandinavian approach.

"The stated goal of the Swedish prison system is to create a safer society by reducing recidivism and rehabilitating offenders rather than focusing solely on punishment. This is achieved through humane treatment, education, and reintegration programs designed to prepare prisoners for life after release."

devsda•40m ago
Because it creates perverse incentive for government to put more people in prison.

Right now the punishment is confinement. When you add effectively unpaid labour in prison as part of acceptable punishment, you're also paving the way for a future where unpaid labor as a standalone punishment is also acceptable. That's just slavery by law.

hvb2•21m ago
> Because it creates perverse incentive for government to put more people in prison.

Except for some rare cases, I think you'll find that the cost of keeping an inmate in prison for a day makes it that you never break even

thelock85•6m ago
Or the taxpayers foot the bill for keeping the inmate in prison while private interests (including but not limited to private prisons and select contractors) take additional profit off the unpaid labor instead of passing savings to the consumer
blobbers•7m ago
Outside in society, I have to work to pay my rent, to pay for my food.

Inside a prison, should they not have a similar responsibility? They commit a crime and as such are held in stasis? Should they not at least carry the burden of themselves

saghm•36m ago
If you aren't already seeing it, it's because you're eyes are closed or you're intentionally looking away: https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-prison-labor/
hasperdi•14m ago
Slavery as punishment is actually allowed by the constitution...

AMENDMENT XIII

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment

UqWBcuFx6NV4r•59m ago
That sounds like something you’d read in a Facebook comment. This is government-sanctioned slavery, and I strongly doubt that it would serve as a deterrent. People routinely put much more on the line for much less.
janalsncm•31m ago
At that rate you can pay back maybe $1000 per year, so if you’re only going to live 30 more years there’s no difference in punishment between 30k in fraud and a billion dollars in fraud. Punishment is the same, so might as well scam more.
donmcronald•6m ago
Seize the generational wealth they accumulated. Make their parents, siblings, kids, grandkids, cousins, etc. demonstrate how they earned their money and take every penny they can’t link to honest means.

The discussion around billionaires needs to move away from taxing their income and beyond taxing their wealth. We need to start talking about how much of their wealth we should be taking away. Light it on fire or delete it. The whole world will be better off.

thayne•4m ago
That might, maybe, make it more effective as a deterrent, and possibly as retribution, but it would be less effective for restitution (since it would take much longer for those defrauded to get paid back).
jmyeet•1h ago
Meanwhile, we have the former governor of Florida and now Seantor from Florida Rick Scott, who was CEO of the company successfully prosecuted for the largest Medicare fraud in history ($1.7 billion) [1].

Here's what to watch: how long it takes for a donation to show up to the Trump library and how soon after that the sentence is commutted. This has erased roughly $1 billion in penalties so far since January 20. Hell, it might only take $1 million.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386....

keernan•1h ago
Why does he only have to repay 45%?
wredcoll•1h ago
Article says medicaid only paid 300ish million on the claims.
frinxor•1h ago
Seeing a lot of these pop up more recently, but this has been happening for a decade now apparently. Isn't this the fault of Medicare itself, of not having routine checks and better processes for preventing these fraudulent claims at the source?

If only the big scams are being caught (and we don't know what % are being caught), there's likely a lot more going undetected.

xnx•53m ago
Is Trump going to pardon this guy like he did Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare out of $73 million?
throw-12-16•19m ago
He should run for the Senate.
shoo•15m ago
see also: Odd Lots interviewed Jetson Leder-Luis about medicare and medicaid fraud (nov 2024): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-fraudsters-are-bil...

AI Police Reports: Year in Review

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/ai-police-reports-year-review
70•hn_acker•3d ago•22 comments

How uv got so fast

https://nesbitt.io/2025/12/26/how-uv-got-so-fast.html
783•zdw•14h ago•258 comments

QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop

https://devblog.qnx.com/qnx-self-hosted-developer-desktop-initial-release/
109•transpute•6h ago•60 comments

Always bet on text (2014)

https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html
178•jesseduffield•8h ago•80 comments

T-Ruby is Ruby with syntax for types

https://type-ruby.github.io/
108•thunderbong•11h ago•64 comments

Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time

https://joannabregan.substack.com/p/toys-with-the-highest-play-time-and
216•surprisetalk•11h ago•215 comments

Exe.dev

https://exe.dev/
142•achairapart•7h ago•63 comments

More Dynamic Cronjobs

https://george.mand.is/2025/09/more-dynamic-cronjobs/
8•0928374082•1h ago•1 comments

The Best Things and Stuff of 2025

https://blog.fogus.me/2025/12/23/the-best-things-and-stuff-of-2025.html
205•adityaathalye•3d ago•25 comments

Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

https://nhmu.utah.edu/articles/experts-explore-new-mushroom-which-causes-fairytale-hallucinations
356•astronads•14h ago•180 comments

Publishing your work increases your luck

https://github.com/readme/guides/publishing-your-work
78•magoghm•6h ago•15 comments

Researchers develop a camera that can focus on different distances at once

https://engineering.cmu.edu/news-events/news/2025/12/19-perfect-shot.html
33•gnabgib•3d ago•11 comments

How Lewis Carroll computed determinants (2023)

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2023/07/10/lewis-carroll-determinants/
169•tzury•12h ago•43 comments

Langjam-Gamejam Devlog: Making a language, compiler, VM and 5 games in 52 hours

https://github.com/Syn-Nine/gar-lang/blob/main/DEVLOG.md
4•suioir•5d ago•0 comments

One million (small web) screenshots

https://nry.me/posts/2025-10-09/small-web-screenshots/
59•squidhunter•4d ago•3 comments

SIMD City: Auto-Vectorisation

https://xania.org/202512/20-simd-city
26•brewmarche•6d ago•2 comments

Show HN: Witr – Explain why a process is running on your Linux system

https://github.com/pranshuparmar/witr
286•pranshuparmar•16h ago•37 comments

Package managers keep using Git as a database, it never works out

https://nesbitt.io/2025/12/24/package-managers-keep-using-git-as-a-database.html
612•birdculture•18h ago•354 comments

CEO of Health Care Software Company Sentenced for $1B Fraud Conspiracy

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ceo-health-care-software-company-sentenced-1b-fraud-conspiracy
64•healsdata•4h ago•44 comments

Drawing with zero-width characters

https://zw.swerdlow.dev
96•benswerd•12h ago•29 comments

LearnixOS

https://www.learnix-os.com
211•gtirloni•18h ago•86 comments

Reverse Engineering Hyperliquid

https://blog.can.ac/2025/12/20/reverse-engineering-hyperliquid/
10•pigeons•5d ago•1 comments

Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

212•kwar13•18h ago•293 comments

-tucky (2023)

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=58650
43•benatkin•3d ago•33 comments

My insulin pump controller uses the Linux kernel. It also violates the GPL

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1puojsr/the_device_that_controls_my_insulin_pump_uses_the/
394•davisr•12h ago•167 comments

Moravec's Paradox and the Robot Olympics

https://www.physicalintelligence.company/blog/olympics
45•beklein•3d ago•3 comments

Parasites plagued Roman soldiers at Hadrian's Wall

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/study-roman-soldiers-battled-parasites-at-hadrians-wall/
52•sipofwater•1w ago•37 comments

Show HN: Xcc700: Self-hosting mini C compiler for ESP32 (Xtensa) in 700 lines

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/xcc700
108•isitcontent•16h ago•20 comments

FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

https://twitter.com/FFmpeg/status/2004599109559496984
458•merlindru•13h ago•153 comments

Gaussian Splatting 3 Ways

https://github.com/NullandKale/NullSplats
64•nullandkale•12h ago•7 comments