Key Points
- Convicted Medicare fraudster Philip Esformes pleaded guilty to a criminal charge as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors.
- In 2020, then-President Donald Trump commuted Esformes’ 20-year prison sentence on charges related to what the Justice Department described as a massive Medicare fraud scheme.
- The DOJ wanted to re-try the Florida nursing home owner on six criminal counts that his original jury failed to reach a verdict on.
It’s a plea deal. He might be informing on other people, or maybe the DOJ didn’t feel like spending the money to retry him.
So? A plea deal is still a conviction. The previous sentence was commuted not pardoned so he still has a record. Adding one charge to the record does nothing. What did the DOJ get out of the deal? Usually plea deals come with some kind of concession from the defense. The article said nothing about an agreement to testify. If he had that card he would have played it before. Plus he is the big fish, who would this information be on? This all seems very weird and pointless.