Trump clemency recipient arrested again on eve of birthday
Left: Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks along the southern border with Mexico, on Aug. 22, 2024, in Sierra Vista, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File). Right: In this Aug. 7, 2015 file photo, Philip Esformes arrives at the 15th Annual Harold and Carole Pump Foundation Gala. The Florida health care executive was convicted on 20 criminal charges in what prosecutors described as a $1 billion Medicare fraud scheme before Trump commuted his sentence (Photo by Rob Latour/Invision/AP, File).
Another Donald Trump clemency recipient with a new lease on life, this one a health care executive turned convicted Medicare fraudster, was arrested on his birthday weekend in Miami, Florida, and faces two felony charges stemming from an alleged domestic violence incident.
The tampering with a witness and criminal mischief case against Philip Esformes, who was booked into the Miami-Dade County jail Sunday, the day he turned 56, made Esformes the seventh Trump clemency recipient to face new charges, the New York Times reported.
According to the report, Esformes allegedly threatened his wife, damaged her cell phone to keep her from calling the cops, and broke “items on a table filled with glassware” in front of family members on the eve of his birthday.
Esformes was convicted in 2019 in what the Justice Department called the “largest health care fraud scheme ever charged” by the department. According to prosecutors, Esformes led an “extensive health care fraud conspiracy” between January 1998 and July 2016 involving a network of assisted living facilities and skilled nursing facilities that he owned.
That scheme involved cycling patients through his facilities where they “often failed to receive appropriate medical services or received medically unnecessary services billed to Medicare and Medicaid.” Many of these facilities were in poor conditions, according to witnesses, which Esformes covered with bribes to Florida state officials.
A 20-year prison sentence followed, but so did clemency.
In 2020, Esformes was given another chance by then President Trump and received support from former George W. Bush administration Attorneys General Michael Mukasey, John Ashcroft, and Alberto Gonzales, Ronald Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and the late former independent counsel Ken Starr.
The White House statement on Esformes’ commutation added that he “has been devoted to prayer and repentance” in prison and was “in declining health.”
Court records reviewed by Law&Crime say that a stay away order has been issued and that Esformes is not currently in jail. An arraignment has been set for 9 a.m. on Nov. 12. The court docket indicated that Esformes has a private defense attorney but did not provide specifics.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
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