A 31-year-old Roswell man has pleaded guilty to his involvement in a $127 million health care fraud and kickbacks scheme in which his marketing company allegedly raked in tens of millions of dollars in proceeds for pressuring beneficiaries to accept unnecessary medical equipment.
Nicco Romanowski has agreed to forfeit $5.5 million in property, including a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and four other vehicles, as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors. He is on bond pending sentencing in May.
Romanowski’s guilty plea came Tuesday in a New Jersey federal court. Prosecutors say he lived in Long Branch, New Jersey, between 2017 and 2019 when the fraud and kickbacks scheme took place.
Case records show that Romanowski and his business partner, Eric Karlewicz, operated Empire Pain Center Holdings LLC, which targeted beneficiaries of the federal Medicare and TRICARE health care programs. Karlewicz, a New York resident, was separately prosecuted.
Empire employees were directed to contact beneficiaries and pressure them into accepting medical equipment they didn’t need, including back, shoulder and knee braces, prosecutors alleged.
Empire then sent the beneficiaries’ medical information and recorded telephone conversations to telemedicine companies, which in turn referred the beneficiaries to medical equipment suppliers, according to Romanowski’s case information.
Kickbacks were allegedly paid by Empire to telemedicine companies for referred beneficiaries. The telemedicine companies then paid doctors and other health care providers to approve pre-written orders for the beneficiaries containing information provided by Empire, prosecutors said.
The doctors allegedly involved received between $20 and $30 for each beneficiary they approved medical equipment for, without determining whether the equipment was needed, case records show.
RediDoc LLC, a telemedicine company based in Phoenix, Arizona, paid doctors in dozens of states millions of dollars for thousands of orders, the federal government alleged. It said Empire paid RediDoc more than $6 million in kickbacks and had similar arrangements with medical equipment suppliers throughout the country.
The suppliers gave Empire more than $63 million of the funds they received from the federal government as reimbursement for the more than $127 million worth of unnecessary medical equipment provided to beneficiaries, prosecutors said.
Romanowski pleaded guilty to single counts of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Kickback Statute.
Romanowski’s lawyer did not immediately respond Thursday to questions about the case.
Karlewicz pleaded guilty in a separate case to the same charges in October, records show. He has yet to be sentenced.
Each defendant faces up to 15 years in prison.
The owners and operators of RediDoc, Arizona residents Stephen Luke and David Laughlin, each pleaded guilty to their involvement in the scheme in 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice reported. They have yet to be sentenced.
As part of his plea deal, Romanowski agreed to pay full restitution, which has yet to be determined. He also agreed to the forfeiture of six vehicles, almost $800,000 in cash, and his interest in 11 companies.
