Site Of Scandal-Tarred Medical Center Now For Lease

It looks like the fraud charges against a Homecrest medical center have forced the facility to close up shop for good, with the Avenue V space now up for lease.

Avenue V Medical Center popped up for lease on real estate websites last week. The listing says the 4,000-square-foot medical space is available immediately, and can be built to suit a new use. It adds that a nuclear scanning camera is already available on the site.

The clinic closed in December after U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced the arrest of 10 people, including the clinic’s owners, for recruiting sham patients and submitting more than $70 million in phony claims to Medicaid and Medicare.

Prosecutors say that the defendants recruited homeless people and the financially vulnerable who were insured by Medicare or Medicaid, hauling them to the three clinics to undergo unnecessary medical tests. The procedures were administered by unlicensed personnel, and the clinics ultimately billed more than $70 million in fraudulent claims, according to prosecutors, paying kickbacks to the phony patients. The scheme dated back to 2005.