Fort Worth Brothers Admit to Role in $36 Million Lab Test Kickback Scheme

Two Fort Worth men pleaded guilty Friday afternoon to playing a role in an alleged $36 million fraud scheme involving unnecessary lab tests of saliva and urine that were billed to the U.S. military’s health care system.Matthew and Britt Hawrylak, who are brothers, entered their pleas and left the courthouse.They are scheduled to be sentenced on the same day in November.Two Travis County men, Erik Bugen and Jody Sheffield, were also charged last month in the alleged scheme, which ran from May 2014 to about July 2017, according to a criminal filing. They have pleaded not guilty in the case. Their attorneys could not be reached Friday for comment.The criminal filing says soldiers were given Wal-Mart gift cards in exchange for their participation in the drug toxicology and DNA cancer screening tests that were not needed and were “the product of kickbacks” to physicians. Tricare, the military’s health care system, paid for the tests, the filing said.“The doctors never saw the patients and had no doctor-patient relationship with the patients,” the criminal filing says.  Continue reading...