FTC Slaps Work-At-Home Medical Billing Software Scammers

A group of California and Nevada-based scammers who pitched fake work-at-home medical billing opportunities, but collected thousands of dollars selling the needed software while those who bought in rarely saw a dime for their effort, has been slapped out of business by the Federal Trade Commission.

"These promoters made promises about earnings and marketability that sounded too good to be true, and they were," said FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection director Howard Beales in an April 23 statement, after the FTC settled its case against Electronic Medical Billing, Inc. and Esoft Caducei, two Nevada companies the commission said bilked thousands around the United States. "The reality is that few consumers who pay for medical billing opportunities find clients or make any money, let alone earn the promised substantial income."

EMB and Esoft, plus officers John C. Moore (of both companies) and David L. Miller (of EMB), were ordered to pay $50,000 in restitution in the case, which came about by way of the FTC's Operation Dialing for Deception sweep in 2002, and the two companies were shut down by a court-appointed receiver, the commission said. Both companies and both defendants were also barred permanently from any future involvement in work-at-home opportunities, the commission added.

Filed a year ago, the complaint charged that EMB, Esoft, and the two officers marketed and sold medical billing work-at-home opportunities both on the Internet and through standard advertising, promising $25,000-50,000 a year in incomes for those paying $325 to register with the program and purchase the software needed to perform the work.

From late 1999 through 2002, the FTC said, the companies promised to provide everything needed to do the job, including training. "However, consumers who paid the fee allegedly discovered that the doctors on the lists provided either were impossible to reach or did not need help with medical billing," the commission said.

The now-defunct companies paid $96,000 out of their corporate assets in refunds through the court receiver, as well. But the FTC said they could re-open the case and call for more payments by the court receiver if it learns later that the companies' financial conditions were misrepresented, since both that $96,000 and the other $50,000 in restitution were based on ability to pay. The defendants were also ordered not to distribute their customer lists.