Based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, Medicare started in 1965. The federal health insurance program is for U.S. citizens aged 65 or older and those who are younger but with disabilities.
Baltimore is around 2,664 miles away from Redondo Beach, Los Angeles County, California, USA. The latter is around 6.2 miles away from Gardena, Los Angeles County.
Who is Sherif Khalil?
Sherif Khalil, 50, of Redondo Beach operated Spectra Clinical Labs, a toxicology lab in Gardena. As the lab owner, he implemented a scheme to pay marketers a percentage of Medicare reimbursements and incentivize them to obtain doctors’ orders for expensive drug testing panels.
To conceal Spectra’s payments to marketers, Khalil routed the payments via nominally independent marketing companies that he secretly controlled. To maximize the lab’s profits and its own commission payments, its marketers then trained staff members at doctors’ offices to send its orders for medically unnecessary urine drug tests that doctors neither wanted nor authorized.
Documentation of medical necessity did not support orders Spectra received from physician practices, which Khalil was aware of. Medicare paid more than $4 million to the lab because of the medically unnecessary laboratory tests ordered in exchange for illegal kickbacks to marketers.
On February 25, 2025, a federal jury in Detroit, Michigan, USA convicted Khalil of the fraud scheme. On August 7, 2025, he will be sentenced.
Khalil was found guilty of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and to pay, offer, receive and solicit health care kickbacks. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the first charge and five years in prison on the second charge.
CONAN Daily 
I am not surprised at all.
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