Watchdog Bytes

Houston physician/fraudster about to make an 11-year house call

Dr. Christina Joy Clardy, 61, is headed to that big waiting room in the federal pen for 135 months (a little over 11 years) for her role in a massive health care fraud conspiracy that billed government health care programs $45 million. 

The Houston MD has been ordered to pay $15.6 million in restitution to Medicare and Medicaid, or roughly 312,000 co-pays, according to the feds. Watchdog hopes she continuously gets hounded by collection phone calls for the money while she’s in the prison chow line. 

Clardy was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, 14 counts of health care fraud and three counts of mail fraud in May, according to federal authorities. City Nursing Services of Texas billed more than $25 million worth of physical therapy services under Clardy’s physician provider numbers between January 2007 and August 2008.

- Darren Barbee

 

Quick, to the bat phone, grandpa

The scheme: Rip off corporations for $60 million. 

The cloak and dagger stuff: Bat phones to exchange secret messages; code names to hide identities; coded messages; thousands of dollars stuffed in packages and dropped at concierge desks and valet stands at a hotel so an associate will "take a vacation" - flee the country rather than testify.

Shot on location: Dallas, Great Britain, Spain, Lebanon, France, the United Arab Emirates

The cast: a half dozen men of various nationalities.

What's wrong with this picture: There's a 73-year-old Dallas man in one of the prime roles.

It's  not a hackneyed movie script - at least not yet. A federal jury in Dallas has convicted Michael Signoretto, 73, of taking part in an international conspiracy to defraud two British companies of $60 million. Four others already have copped pleas in the case and are awaiting sentencing; one man is still at large.  

The group bought a London business and used it to buy "air time" from two British telecom companies. Then, they sold the time at a loss to others, put their company into bankruptcy and fled with the cash, moving it through shell companies to banks in several countries, according to the U.S. Attorney for North Texas.

Signoretto faces a maximum sentence of 20 years on each of the two counts on which he was convicted, the Justice Department said. 

 

A penny for your pump and dump schemes

With a nationwide marketing campaign, penny stock promoter Jason Wynn and his companies touted four companies in which he had purchased tens of millions of shares. The campaign worked - at least from Wynn's point of view. When the stocks soared, Wynn's plan was to sell and reap the profits, federal regulators say. The Securities and Exchange Commission has now won a judgment against Wynn.  

Dark tunnel-conveyor belt fatal accident may cost Fort Worth company $55,000

A Fort Worth company, whose employee was fatally injured on the job in New York State, has been cited for several serious safety hazards and faces $55,440 in proposed penalties.

Southland Contracting, which faces seven violations of workplace safety standards, has 15 days to comply with guidelines, according to the U.S. Department of labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

On April 11, Southland employees were performing tunneling operations in the raw water intake tunnel when a fuse blew after a piece of equipment was plugged into a branch circuit designed for temporary lighting, causing the lights in the tunnel to go out.

In the darkness, an employee who was operating a locomotive sustained a fatal head injury when he struck a conveyor on the tunnel boring machine.One repeat violation was cited for failing to instruct workers in the recognition and avoidance of "struck-by," "caught-in" and crushing hazards associated with tunnel boring and locomotive equipment.

A repeat violation exists when an employer previously has been cited for the same or a similar violation of a standard, regulation, rule or order at any other facility in federal enforcement states within the last five years. A similar hazard was cited at this company's Batesville, Ark., work site in 2010.

The company couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. 

-- Darren Barbee

More than 450 Texas workers killed on the job last year

How did you die/want to die at work in 2010? 

The government says 48 of you were cut down by bullets while on the job in Texas last year. Five
workers died from drowning, six were caught in the grip of running machinery and another 50 died from falls. Self-inflicted injuries accounted for 23 deaths. 

Transportation incidents were the most frequent workplace fatality, accounting for 196 deaths or 42 percent. All told, 456 people were killed on the job in the Lone Star State last year, down by 26 from a year earlier, according to preliminary stats from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Men were most likely to die, accounting for 426, or 93 percent, of the work-related fatalities. In Texas, 56 percent were white non-Hispanics.

Nationwide, that group accounted for 72 percent of work-related deaths. Overall, a preliminary total of 4,547 fatal work injuries were recorded in 2010, about the same as the final count of 4,551 recorded in 2009, according to results from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries program. 

 

Remember, safety first.

 

-- Darren Barbee