Health Care Fraud: The Escalating Price of "Weaving a Tangled Web"
In addition to various civil and administrative penalties...health care providers who are accused of either making false statements or engaging in records falsification, destruction, etc., whether they do so before or after a Federal investigation has been started, face the threat of incarceration for up to 20 years ... Further, given the relatively low threshold of evidence required for the Government to prove a conspiracy charge, even “minor players” (e.g., billing personnel, insurance company representatives, etc.) who become knowing participants in any act that violates [the law], “shall be fined or imprisoned.”
Indeed, these various statutes promise a tangled (and punitive) web for those who would practice to deceive.