A medical biller based in Tampa Bay, Florida has confessed to four counts of aggravated identity theft, four counts of healthcare fraud, two counts of failure to submit a tax return, and one count of submitting a false tax return.
Joshua Maywalt, 40 years old, was employed as a medical biller at a Clearwater firm that offered medical billing and credentialing services to a variety of healthcare company clients in Florida. As a medical biller, he got access to the firm’s financial information, names of the medical provider, and patient data.
Maywalt had worked on the Tampa Bay area doctor’s account and filed claims to Florida Medicaid HMOs for services given by that doctor to Medicaid recipients. Maywalt tampered with the company’s patient data and utilized the name and ID number of the doctor to file fake and fraudulent claims to a Florida Medicaid HMO for healthcare services that Maywalt reported were given by the doctor when they were not. The “pay to” details on the claims for the fictitious healthcare services was modified to account numbers controlled by Maywalt.
Maywalt was unable to submit a tax return in 2017 and 2018 with the Internal Revenue Service and submitted a fake tax return for the 2019 tax wherein he significantly underreported his earnings since he didn’t include the amounts he paid into his bank accounts from his fake billing activities.
Based on the United States Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida, Maywalt will surrender $2.2 million in cash and real estate property, which are directly linked to his crimes. He is currently facing a maximum imprisonment term of 53 years, 10 years for every healthcare fraud count, about 3 years for the falsified filing of tax return, about 2 years for every count of inability to submit a tax return, and a compulsory 2 years for every count of aggravated identity theft. The sentences for aggravated identity theft will be enforced consecutively.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General, the Florida Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation investigated the case.