{"id":218084,"date":"2016-01-07T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T20:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=218084"},"modified":"2016-01-07T06:00:41","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T20:00:41","slug":"guam-ambulance-company-gm-staffer-admit-to-fraud-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/guam-ambulance-company-gm-staffer-admit-to-fraud-conspiracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Guam ambulance company GM, staffer admit to fraud conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>HAGATNA, Guam <\/strong>(AP)\u2014Two employees of a Guam ambulance company have admitted guilt in a conspiracy to defraud the federal government of nearly $11 million.<\/p>\n<p>Trevor Cruz and Jared Jay Ada pleaded guilty last week in federal court to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Their plea agreements call for a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, The Pacific Daily News reported. <\/p>\n<p>Both men are accused of participating in a scheme to fraudulently bill Medicare and TriCare for services rendered by Guam Medical Transport from March 2010 to March 2014. <\/p>\n<p>Court documents say Ada is the company\u2019s general manager and Cruz is the billing manager. <\/p>\n<p>Guam Medical Transport is authorized by Medicare and TriCare to provide ambulance service, but service is only covered when a patient has a condition that makes ambulance transportation \u201cmedically necessary and reasonable.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors allege Ada and Cruz committed fraud in order to bill and collect for services that would have otherwise been ineligible for coverage. <\/p>\n<p>The defendants\u2019 plea agreements include a provision that allows the court to hand down a sentence less than the maximum if they provided \u201csubstantial assistance\u201d to investigators. Federal prosecutors will later determine whether the assistance was sufficient in the case for a reduced sentence. <\/p>\n<p>Assistant U.S. Attorney Mohammad Khatib said an investigation into the case remains ongoing. <\/p>\n<p>Cruz and Ada remain out of custody and are scheduled to be back in court on May 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HAGATNA, Guam (AP)\u2014Two employees of a Guam ambulance company have admitted guilt in a conspiracy&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9023,318,9024,55],"class_list":["post-218084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-attorney-mohammad-khatib","tag-gm","tag-guam-medical-transport","tag-health-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}