Federal Reports

Jonathan Lasko, a resident of Hollywood, Florida, pleaded guilty in the Circuit Court ofthe Fifteenth Judicial Circuit for Palm Beach County on June 15, 2021, to charges relatedto a health care fraud scheme. Lasko, who owned addiction treatment facilities inFlorida and California, engaged in a scheme where he paid kickbacks to marketers, alsoknown as “patient brokers,” for the referral of patients to his facilities. Lasko pleadedguilty to First Degree Felony Organized Scheme to Defraud and was sentenced to fiveyears of probation. He admitted to defrauding insurance companies, includingAmtrak’s insurance administrator, Aetna, in an aggregate amount exceeding $50,000.Criminal judicial proceedings for other defendants in this case are pending.

The objective of our review was to evaluate the results of Federal Student Aid’s (FSA) process for suspending involuntary collection and refunding payments involuntarily collected on defaulted Department-held loans in response to the Coronavirus pandemic.We found that FSA suspended administrative wage garnishments and the U.S. Department of Treasury (Treasury) offsets for over 96 percent of the borrowers that FSA collected payments for within 90 days of March 13, 2020, the start of the suspension period. However, as of October 23, 2020, we found that FSA continued to receive administrative wage garnishments for 1,930 borrowers.We also found that FSA refunded most administrative wage garnishments and Treasury offsets collected from March 13, 2020, through September 30, 2020, and issued refunds for $576.65 million (99 percent) of the $582.48 million collected for the same period. FSA also refunded 1,063,984 of the 1,094,507 administrative wage garnishments and 221,436 of the 244,080 Treasury offsets within 60 days from the date the payments were received. However, we found that FSA did not reprocess refunds for $21.25 million of the $576.65 million FSA refunded that were subsequently returned to Treasury and did not refund $5.83 million (1 percent) of the $582.48 million wage garnishments and Treasury offsets collected.Finally, we found that FSA did not develop procedures to obtain and track the U.S. Department of Justice’s (Justice) progress on suspending involuntary collections and refunding payments involuntarily collected on defaulted Department-held loans from March 13, 2020, through September 30, 2020.

Delays in EPA SIP actions increase the risk that state or local air agencies are not implementing plans sufficient to achieve or maintain the NAAQS.

VA medical facilities’ demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed how the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) ensured the Medical/Surgical Prime Vendor-Next Generation (MSPV-NG) program and its prime vendors met contract requirements by offering medical facilities a no-cost option to develop advance-order supply lists tailored to catastrophic events and contingency plans. The OIG also assessed whether facilities took advantage of those options and strategies and relied on the contracts to obtain PPE during the pandemic.All four MSPV-NG prime vendors developed contingency plans that included the advance-order list. Three of the four vendors also offered options to purchase and store medical supplies in advance. Though the prime vendors fulfilled their contract requirements, the OIG found none of 16 medical facilities assessed took advantage of those emergency strategies before the pandemic. Most facility leaders did not know those plans existed. Most medical facilities reported maintaining their own contingency stocks, which were at risk of quickly depleting. That risk increased when prime vendors were unable to fulfill orders, leading staff to purchase medical supplies on the open market where VHA’s data showed they paid higher prices.By not asking prime vendors to provide services established in contingency plans, VA medical facilities missed opportunities to receive certain needed medical supplies. VA can apply lessons learned during the pandemic by continuing to refine its contract requirements for prime vendors to address catastrophes.The OIG recommended educating chief logistics officers on the supply strategies offered in prime vendors’ contingency plans, and ensure they understand how those strategies can help mitigate supply shortages. The OIG also recommended clarifying for local facilities the intent of the emergency and continuous supply contract provisions.

The objective was to (1) determine whether the Social Security Administration (SSA) made payments to beneficiaries and/or representative payees who were deceased according to Alabama, Georgia, or Illinois records and (2) identify non-beneficiaries in the States’ files whose death information did not appear in Agency records.

The objective was to determine whether the Social Security Administration (SSA) complied with its policies and procedures for allegations of misuse by individual representative payees (payee) who served 14 or fewer beneficiaries. Specifically, we examined SSA’s negligence determinations and whether it reimbursed beneficiaries and obtained restitution of misused funds from payees.