South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Feds: VA employees in S. Florida took bribes and misused credit cards
The money was meant to buy supplies for ailing and hospitalized U.S. veterans.
But untold millions over the last decade went to corrupt U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital employees in South Florida and the nefarious owners of medical supply companies selling overpriced goods, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Sometimes the orders of catheters, angioplasty balloons and scores of Dr. Easy Elephant Ear Wash Systems were never even delivered, a federal indictment said.
Other times, only partially filled orders would arrive.
Now 15 South Floridians are facing federal charges in a kickback-and-bribery scheme uncovered at Veterans Affairs hospitals in West Palm Beach and Miami, prosecutors announced at a news conference Thursday.
They are 13 men and two women. The youngest 35; the oldest 73. They are from Miramar, Cutler Bay and Port Saint Lucie. Miami and Boca Raton too. They live in beach cities: Delray, Hallandale, Riviera and West Palm, court records show.
“Public officials are not for sale,” said U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan, of the Southern District of Florida. “It is a very sad day when public employees are alleged to have violated their duty.”
Two-thirds of the accused were VA employees who took cash bribes in exchange for using government-issued Visa credit cards to buy wares at “grossly inflated prices,” a federal indictment said.
The rest were the owners and operators of 10 different illegitimate supply companies: Jorge Flores, 45, of Delray Beach, Earron
Starks, 49, and Carlicha Starks, 40, both of Hallandale Beach; and Robert Kozak, 73, of Boca Raton.
From 2009 to 2019, according to the indictment, companies owned by Flores, the Starks and Kozak “collectively obtained millions of dollars in proceeds as the result of fraud and kickbacks at the VA-WPB.”
A 48-year-old Delray Beach woman, Lisa M. Anderson, also charged, is accused of making false statements on a vendor application.
Federal prosecutors characterized the charged Veterans Affairs staffers as “bad apples” and “low level employees” who undermined the integrity of the rest of their colleagues in the agency.
Leading the ring at the West Palm Beach VA, according to court documents, were Clinton Purvis, 52, Christopher Young, 44, and Bob Johnson Jr., 62, all of West Palm Beach, and Kenneth Scott, 59, of Rivera Beach.
The accused from the Miami VA Medical Center are Jose Eugenio Cuervo, 53, of Miramar; Waymon Melvon Woods, 58, of Miami; Eugene Campbell, 60, and Robert Lee James, 44, both of Miami Gardens; Donnie Shatek Hawes, 35, of Cutler Bay; and Don Anderson, 59, of Port St. Lucie, records show.
“Together, alongside our VA partners, we will continue to protect our federal programs, combat public corruption, and ensure that our veterans receive the care and quality services that they are owed,” Fajardo Orshan said.
The 15 face charges ranging from bribery to fraud and conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud.
Bribery carries a 15-year prison sentence, while fraud and conspiracy carry penalties of 10 years each.