Tritico Rainey PLLC issued the following announcement on Oct. 26.
A Texas native was drafted by the NFL’s Buffalo Bills as a defensive end out of Baylor University back in 1976. Though Leslie Benson later wound up with the Dallas Cowboys, his pro football career was so unremarkable that the NFL's website says there are no career statistics for him.
Benson would later become a doctor with offices in Fort Worth, Waco and Temple. Two women who worked as billing clerks in his workers’ compensation clinics have been charged with health care fraud, according to the federal government’s Department of Justice. The former footballer was charged last year for his role in an alleged scheme to defraud the government of more than $158 million.
The indictment states that the one of the women ran Benson’s Temple and Waco offices and the other ran the Fort Worth office. Court documents allege that the women submitted (or taught others how to submit) fraudulent health care claims between Jan. 2011 and March of last year.
The women reportedly received incentive bonuses for total billing to the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs: one woman received 2 percent of the total billed and the other received 1 percent.
Documents filed in court allege that one of the methods used to inflate the bills was to indicate reports were drafted by physicians rather than the actual non-medical staff who composed the reports. The indictments also allege that workers’ comp was charged for drug tests that were never administered and for physical therapy and other services never rendered.