A Florida medical biller who admitted to billing Medicaid for services that were not rendered was sentenced to five years and five months in prison and ordered to forfeit more than $2.2 million.
Joshua Maywalt, 42, of Tampa, worked as a medical biller at a Clearwater, Fla., company that provided credentialing and medical billings services for providers, according to a June 2 U.S. Justice Department news release.
Mr. Maywalt was assigned to an unnamed Tampa Bay area physician's account and was responsible for submitting claims for Medicaid recipients. According to court documents, he abused his role by wrongfully accessing and using the company's patient information and the physician's name and identification number to submit fraudulent claims to a Florida Medicaid HMO for services that were not rendered.
Payments for the fraudulent claims were sent to bank accounts Mr. Maywalt controlled, according to the Justice Department.
In December 2021, Mr. Maywalt pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud, aggravated identity theft, filing a false income tax return in 2019, the year he didn't report income from his fraud, and failing to file income tax returns in 2017 and 2018.