Jurors to decide fate of South Florida psychiatrist, others in Medicare fraud trial

Highlights from an extended report in the Miami Herald

Barry Kaplowitz was a psychiatrist with a “robotic” signature who signed off on thousands of bogus treatments at a Hollywood psychiatric facility that bilked Medicare for millions — even when he was out of the country, prosecutors say.

“It’s not just any kind of signing; it’s robo-signing,” Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Warren declared during closing arguments at his Miami federal trial.

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On Tuesday, Miami federal jurors resumed deliberating the fate of Kaplowitz, 54, an Aventura psychiatrist who worked part-time as the medical director of Hollywood Pavilion’s outpatient facility, and two other defendants on charges of conspiring to defraud Medicare and related offenses.

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The other defendants are Melvin Hunter, 63, a Broward resident who worked as an admissions supervisor for Hollywood Pavilion’s inpatient facility, and Tiffany Foster, 49, an Alabama resident accused of taking bribes to refer mental health patients.

A fourth defendant, Christopher Gabel, 62, of Davie, the former chief operating officer, pleaded guilty in November to conspiring to commit healthcare fraud and pay kickbacks to patient recruiters. Gabel, who is serving a six-year prison term, testified that Medicare beneficiaries — including drug addicts with disability status — were admitted regardless of whether they qualified for treatment or even saw a doctor.

The latest trial followed the 2013 conviction of Hollywood Pavilion's chief executive officer, Karen Kallen-Zury, of Lighthouse Point, who was found guilty along with three other employees of conspiring to bilk $67 million from Medicare by filing phony claims for mental health services from 2003 to 2012. Medicare was tricked into paying $40 million to Hollywood Pavilion. Of those defendants, Kallen-Zury received the longest sentence: 25 years.

During the six-week trial, prosecutors presented evidence showing that Kaplowitz generated $6.5 million in false claims for Medicare patients who did not need psychiatric treatment, resulting in $3 million in tainted income for Hollywood Pavilion between 2008 and 2011. The psychiatrist was paid $1,250 a month over that period for showing up one day a week to sign charts and other paperwork to justify 2,800 false claims to Medicare, prosecutors said.

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The prosecution of Kaplowitz, Hunter and Foster was the latest crackdown by the Justice Department and U.S. attorney's office against operators of mental-health facilities accused of fleecing the Medicare program.

Three previous major prosecutions led to the convictions of about 100 clinic operators, doctors, therapists and patient recruiters at American Therapeutic, Biscayne Milieu and Health Care Solutions Network in South Florida.

Several of those convicted defendants testified at the latest trial. Among them: Dr. Alan Gumer, a former medical director at the Hollywood Pavilion facility who is serving a 21/2-year sentence in the American Therapeutic case, and Keith Humes, a Hollywood Pavilion patient recruiter who is serving a seven-year prison sentence stemming from another Medicare fraud offense.