Health-care fraudster to pay $1.3M

A MONTGOMERY County man who bilked Medicare in an ambulance-transport scheme was sentenced Thursday to time served and ordered to repay the government health-insurance program for seniors more than $1.3 million.

Boris Rostovsky, 44, formerly of Bryn Athyn, pleaded guilty in August to health-care fraud. He had been in custody since his arrest in February 2011.

Federal prosecutors said that in May and June 2010, Rostovsky schemed to bilk Medicare by directing his employees to transport patients via his private ambulance company, Grey Eagle, Inc.

The patients were not eligible for transport by ambulance because they could walk or sit in a wheelchair, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan said in court papers.

Morgan said that Rostovsky, who is married and the father of a 3-year-old boy, "bragged" in an undercover recording about his "prowess" to defraud Medicare.

A government informant obtained a recorded conversation with Rostovsky in August 2010 in which Rostovsky admitted that he paid kickbacks to patients, falsified Medicare paperwork, provided bogus information during a Medicare audit in April 2010 and told walking patients to get on stretchers to "make it legit," Morgan said in court papers.

- Michael Hinkelman