Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice busted a Medicare fraud ring in Miami, indicting eight suspects who allegedly cheated the government out of $30 million. That same week, the agency arrested 40 people in Detroit and Miami on similar charges of defrauding Medicare out of $50 million.

The crackdown couldn't come at a better time. As Congress debates health-care reform legislation, a key component must include eliminating fraud in the $460 billion federal program that insures 45 million of the nation's seniors and disabled. Medicare fraud costs taxpayers $46 billion each year. And South Florida, with more than 700,000 Medicare beneficiaries and a large immigrant population, is Scam Central.

Medicare lost $800 million to fraud in South Florida last year. "It's certainly an epidemic problem in Miami," said deputy chief Kirk Ogrosky, head of the Justice Department's criminal health-care fraud division. "When you have people, in some of our cases, that come from countries that have operated under socialist systems where they're used to taking advantage of the government and to the government providing benefits, there's a lot of fraud."

The majority of Medicare fraud involves recipients - many of them low-income - who get paid for letting perpetrators use their Medicare identification to file false claims. "When you tell someone who gets Social Security benefits of between $700 and $900 a month that you're going to pay them $1,200 every month just to provide a copy of their Medicare card, that's a pretty lucrative inducement," Mr. Ogrosky said. "A lot of these folks don't view it as criminal."

Two years ago, Mr. Ogrosky assembled Medicare Fraud Strike Force teams in Miami-Dade County comprised of prosecutors and federal agents who ferret out patterns of false billing and go after perpetrators before they can close up shop and run. Medicare must pay claims within 12 days, giving employees little time to notice aberrations. Strike force members can act fast and disrupt fraud networks rather than spend years building a case.

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