A man charged earlier this month with defrauding Medicare out of $1 million through a scam targeting New Jersey senior citizens paid a visit to a Gloucester County senior facility in November, police confirmed.
CLAYON -- A man charged earlier this month with defrauding Medicare out of $1 million through a scam targeting New Jersey senior citizens paid a visit to a Gloucester County senior facility in November, police confirmed.
Seth Rehfuss, 41, of Somerset, was arrested earlier this month on charges that he defrauded the Medicare program by convincing hundreds of seniors around the state to undergo unnecessary genetic testing, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey.
Rehfuss accomplished this through a group called The Good Samaritans of America. Rehfuss and others used Good Samaritans of America to gain access to senior housing complexes where they gave presentations to residents, officials reported.
Those facilities included Clayton Mews.
"I can confirm that the gentleman arrested in this case was at Clayton Mews," Clayton Police Sgt. Andrew Davis said Thursday.
Rehfuss met with a group of about 20 senior citizens at the facility in November, Davis said.
While details of that local meeting haven't been released, federal authorities previously reported that Rehfuss and his colleagues lured seniors to presentations with advertisements of free ice cream. In those presentations, they used "fear-based tactics" to convince seniors that they were vulnerable to heart attacks, strokes, cancer and even suicide if they did not have this testing, federal officials reported.
The stated goal of the testing was to determine if patients were vulnerable to side effects from medications. Rehfuss also claimed that the testing allowed for "personalized medicine," according to the charges.
Rehfuss and others then took DNA swabs where the meetings took place or arranged to do it in the seniors' apartments, with no involvement of a healthcare provider or determination that the treatment was necessary, officials said when announcing the charges.
Using Craigslist, Rehfuss was able to recruit health care providers who were paid to sign test requisition forms for procedures they never performed for patients they never met. Medicare paid out more than a million dollars to two clinical laboratories from which Rehfuss received commissions of tens of thousands of dollars, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Rehfuss was charged with one count of health care fraud.
Only one of the local seniors came forward following news of Rehfuss' arrest to report that she had filled out paperwork and submitted to a DNA swab following a presentation.
"It's still an open investigation," Davis said. "We don't know how many senior citizens provided him with any identifying information or DNA for testing."
Clayton police are working with other agencies to share all information gleaned, Davis added. Anyone who attended the Clayton meeting and provided information or a DNA sample can contact Clayton police at 856-881-2300.
While the focus of the federal case was on the alleged Medicare fraud, county officials stressed the issues surrounding release of personal information.
Anyone who was a victim of this scam should call their local police and contact Social Security and Medicare to let them know that their personal information may have been compromised, officials said.
"If our residents take nothing else from this new invasive scam, please do not let people into your home that you do not know, or people who cannot show credible identification," Freeholder Lyman Barnes said in a statement. "If the person insists he/she is from a legitimate non-profit organization and you are still not comfortable, call 9-1-1."
To learn more about identity theft and other scams, contact the county Office of Consumer Affairs at 856-384-6855.
Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
