Homeless allegedly used in fraud scheme...

..by hospital executive and homeless shelter director, among others, in L.A., this article reports, after an investigation by authorities of the dumping of homeless patients which led to discovery of the fraudulent scheme.

They enticed homeless people with the promise of payments to act as hospital patients, an indictment alleges. The homeless people allegedly received medical treatment and the government was billed for the services.

The unnecessary hospital treatments were then billed to Medicare and Medi-Cal in a scheme that began in August 2004 and lasted until about October 2007, the indictment states.

....the scheme was discovered in October 2006 by police officers who initially believed they were witnessing homeless patient dumping, a common practice of temporarily removing homeless people from an area to a hospital or another location.

via cnn.com

Three Southern California hospitals are named in the indictment and thousands of homeless people were allegedly recruited to receive unnecessary medical treatment costing millions of dollars.