{"id":892163,"date":"2026-06-25T16:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T16:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/892163\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T16:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T16:43:14","slug":"north-carolina-man-admits-orchestrating-health-care-fraud-kickback-scheme-that-stole-60m-from-taxpayers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/892163\/","title":{"rendered":"North Carolina man admits orchestrating health care fraud, kickback scheme that stole $60M from taxpayers"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 A North Carolina man pleaded guilty Wednesday to defrauding Medicare out of $60 million<\/a> through a kickback scheme involving bogus tests for COVID-19, flu and other viruses.<\/p>\n

James Shuford Price III copped to filing a false tax return and paying off collectors of sham test specimens after pilfering funds from Medicare and the California Medical Assistance Program (Medi-Cal)<\/a> to pay for the tests at his lab in the Golden State.<\/p>\n

The 59-year-old Raleigh native faces up to 13 years in prison and a $500,000 fine when sentenced, along with three years of supervised release.<\/p>\n

A North Carolina man pleaded guilty Wednesday to defrauding Medicare out of $60 million through an illegal kickback scheme involving bogus COVID-19, flu and other virus tests. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of North Carolina<\/p>\n

Price owned Los Angeles-based Golden Star Labs and submitted $11 million in false claims to Medicare and $85 million in false claims to Medi-Cal for SARS-CoV-2, Influenza A and B, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) tests between August 2023 and June 2025.<\/p>\n

Medicare and Medi-Cal responded by forking over more than $60 million to Golden Star. The FBI and US Attorney\u2019s Office in the Eastern District of North Carolina later seized $6 million in assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cStealing taxpayer dollars that should be used to help legitimate beneficiaries is lowdown, dirty pool. We have a message to fraudsters who steal federal dollars: we will catch, prosecute, and imprison you. Cheaters. Never. Win,\u201d said Eastern North Carolina US Attorney Ellis Boyle.<\/p>\n

The collectors committed \u201cwidespread identity theft\u201d \u2014 including of out-of-state physicians \u2014 to obtain the samples, according to prosecutors. Vitalii Vodolazskyi \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Price worked with so-called \u201ccollectors\u201d in California and other states who were paid more than $17 million to supply samples between August 2023 and January 2025.<\/p>\n

The collectors committed \u201cwidespread identity theft\u201d \u2014 including of out-of-state physicians \u2014 to obtain the specimens, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

For example, upward of 90% of the claims Price submitted from his lab to Medi-Cal used fake test requests based on stolen personal information from five clinicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese fake contracts were meant to give the false appearance that GSL was complying with the law,\u201d the Department of Justice noted in a press release. Tada Images \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Each had seemingly signed phony contracts with Price\u2019s GSL lab to hand over the samples for a fixed fee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese fake contracts were meant to give the false appearance that GSL was complying with the law,\u201d the Department of Justice noted in a press release.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, the same kickback scheme with GSL paying collectors on a per-specimen basis to induce referrals continued without regard to these phony contracts, resulting in millions of dollars in Medi-Cal\/Medicare payouts to GSL.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2022, Price also filed a false federal income tax return based on income he received \u2014 to which he also pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 A North Carolina man pleaded guilty Wednesday to defrauding Medicare out of $60 million through a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":892164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[35],"tags":[276,820,210,1141,1142,15428,3235,519,80,56002,67,132,68,1154],"class_list":["post-892163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-california","tag-fraud","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-justice-department","tag-medicare","tag-north-carolina","tag-politics","tag-prosecutors","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-us-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116811753605340910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}