Federal Reports

Mark Hernandez, a psychiatrist based in Miami, Florida; Peter Port, owner of Safe Haven Recovery Inc.; Brian Dublynn, Vice President of Safe Haven Recovery; and medical marketer Jennifer Sanford were sentenced in United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, on October 23, 2023, for conspiracy and other charges related to health care fraud. Hernandez was sentenced to 52 months in prison and 3 years’ probation; Port was sentenced to 108 months in prison and 3 years’ probation; Dublynn was sentenced to 42 months in prison and 3 years’ probation; and Sanford was sentenced to time served and 3 years’ probation.The defendants conspired to defraud private health companies by causing Safe Haven, a substance abuse treatment facility in Miami, along with several clinical laboratories, to submit false and fraudulent claims to health insurance plans for addiction treatment services that were not provided as billed and laboratory tests that were not medically necessary. As a result of the scheme, Amtrak’s insurance providers were billed approximately $86,130.

Our objective was to assess the Postal Service’s CPU and VPO programs. Specifically, we (1) assessed Postal Service oversight of CPUs and VPOs, and (2) evaluated Postal Service strategies for establishing new CPUs and VPOs. We analyzed policies, data, and growth initiatives, and visited select CPUs and VPOs nationwide.

We found that a contractor wrongfully obtained over $10.7 million in Buy Indian Act set-aside contracts from BIA and BIE.

We performed an audit examining HUD’s efforts to prevent duplication of benefits when using Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Disaster Recovery and Mitigation funds.  Our objective was to determine how the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) assesses the adequacy of grantee procedures to prevent a duplication of benefits, both before and after grant execution.

HUD certified grantees’ high-level processes for preventing duplication of benefits before grant execution and allowed grantees to develop more detailed procedures for individual grant activities later.  However, HUD did not review grantees’ more detailed procedures before grantees began spending funds on program activities.  In addition, HUD certified before grant award that grantees had adequate procedures when the grantees’ procedures did not meet the adequacy criteria HUD established in the Federal Register.  Further, HUD’s adequacy criteria did not include all statutory requirements.  Because HUD certified procedures that did not meet requirements and did not review detailed activity-level procedures before grantees began spending funds, HUD risked grantees’ failing to prevent any duplication of benefits in accordance with the law.

We recommended that the Director of the Office of Disaster Recovery (1) review grantees’ activity-level procedures to prevent any duplication of benefits for adequacy before grantees process applications for assistance and (2) ensure that all applicable requirements for preventing any duplication of benefits are included in the adequacy criteria, grantee certifications, and HUD review checklists supporting the certification.