After a six-year investigation, a Minnesota couple has been charged in a $15 million fraud scheme that has left the community of Eden Prairie reeling.
The pair, 39-year-old Gabriel Luthor and 42-year-old Elizabeth Brown, allegedly defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers out of millions through a neurofeedback therapy business.
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“The whole thing, you couldn’t make it up,” neighbor Sue Donkersgoed, who lives across the street from Luthor and Brown, told KARE 11 News.
How the scheme unfolded
Luthor and Brown were reported to have lived an extravagant lifestyle that involved wild parties at their 9,000-square-foot home. Neighbor complaints got law enforcement’s attention, which led them to dig deeper.
It turned out that Luthor and Brown, who ran a business called Golden Victory Medical, providing neurofeedback therapy and other medical services, had allegedly been overbilling insurers and pocketing the difference since 2018.
Brown, the company’s founder, at one point claimed to serve more than 451 patients a day, according to one search warrant, reports KARE 11.
Golden Victory also allegedly submitted claims repeatedly to insurers using medical codes that did not cover the neurofeedback services the company provided. According to court documents, the business also combined billing codes that could not be combined and used codes indicating that patients were treated for a longer period of time than they actually were.
In addition to wild parties, neighbors say Luthor and Brown drove luxury cars, all paid for by the fraudulent funds they collected, according to an analysis by KARE 11 of hundreds of pages of search warrants recently made public. Those warrants also showed that in just one month, Luthor spent almost $100,000 at various nightclubs in the Minneapolis area. He also spent more than $32,000 at restaurants during that same month-long period.
Luthor did share the wealth a bit — but in the form of allegedly sending about $5,000 during that same month to various women on Tinder.
Luthor and Brown are also alleged to have used some of the fraudulent $15 million they collected to purchase their Eden Prairie mansion and cover the living expenses of other girlfriends of Luthor’s who lived with the couple and, according to the indictment, helped them carry out the fraud scheme by submitting insurance claims. However, they didn’t benefit financially from it and therefore haven’t been charged.
As KARE 11 reports, Luthor also has a criminal past, having been convicted of credit card fraud 15 years ago under a different name. He was later allowed to legally change his name.
Luthor and Brown were arrested in Las Vegas and released on bond. The couple is scheduled to appear in federal court on April 30.
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The problem with medical fraud
Health care fraud is problematic on the basis of it being illegal. But the issue here goes beyond that. The other problem is that when medical providers defraud insurers, everyone loses out.
“Defrauding critical healthcare [sic] programs like Medicaid and Medicare burden systems designed to serve patients and puts them at risk,” said Special Agent in Charge Alvin M. Winston Sr. of FBI Minneapolis in a press release.
“The FBI and our partners will not tolerate those who abuse the healthcare [sic] system for personal gain and will pursue justice on behalf of taxpayers and patients.”
The FBI reports that health care fraud can take on different forms. It can mean double billing, billing for services not provided, submitting multiple bills for the same services or billing for more expensive procedures than what patients actually receive.
The United States Sentencing Commission says that, in 2023, 9.2% of fraud cases were health care fraud. The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA), meanwhile, estimates that financial losses from health care fraud amount to tens of billions of dollars each year.
The more criminals that are able to get away with health care fraud, the more it’s apt to cost Americans on a whole in the form of higher insurance premiums. Plus, health care fraud has the potential to put patients’ health at risk. Providers might subject patients to needless, and in some cases, risky, procedures just to inflate their bills and receive more money from insurers.
That’s why it’s important for patients to be vigilant about health care fraud, and to loop their insurers in if they suspect it. Reviewing all health care bills carefully and questioning procedures or billing codes that don’t look right could open the door to further investigation. Patients can also report health care fraud individually and flag issues to their insurance companies.
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This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.