Former South African employees of what was supposedly a healthcare company, which is being investigated for fraud in the US, say they are still owed hundreds of thousands of rands in unpaid salaries.
Virtual Benefit Solutions Hearing Clinic used the acronym VBS – the same as the scandal-plagued bank that collapsed in 2018 – and opened in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg in early 2022, according to News24.
The bankrupt bank and the healthcare group are unrelated.
VBS Hearing Clinic quickly employed South Africans to work as medical billers, submitting codes to claim payments for clients from insurance companies and government healthcare providers in the US. Much of the work involved Covid-19 tests.
One former employee said the company and its CEO, Tyrone Moore, had arrived promising them a bright future with secure employment, high salaries, and the chance to get in on the ground floor. But the promises didn’t materialise, and the company failed to pay them months of salaries before it abruptly shut its offices last September.
Now, VBS Hearing Clinic as well as Moore are being investigated for healthcare fraud, conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, and the submission of bogus healthcare claims by special agents of the US Health Department, working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The case is laid out in a detailed application for a search warrant to seize the group's emails, online communications, and financial documents. The warrant was signed off this month by a California judge, meaning the authorities may already have access to private files.
VBS Hearing Clinic has not submitted its version of events.
The probe may help former South African employees who are searching for answers about why the company, with whom they hoped to build their futures, abruptly ditched them.
VBS Hearing Clinic did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Its South African website is offline, its phones are out of order, and queries to local email addresses bounced back.
'Doing work for the US'
A former employee, who worked for VBS Hearing Clinic for more than a year, said he heard from a friend in early 2022 that a US healthcare company was looking for workers at branches it planned to open in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg.
He applied and got a job as a medical biller. He said that perhaps two dozen people were employed at its offices, maybe more. Most worked as billers.
He was told the work would involve billing South African companies with whom VBS Hearing Clinic planned to work. But first, he and his colleagues needed to help with a “backlog” of work from the company’s operations in the US.
“We were billing based on a system in the US,” he said. “We were all doing work for the US … claims, payments, for medical aids and governments.”
At first, they were extremely busy. But they soon found they didn’t have much work to do. After months of stop-start work submitting claims for clients in the US, some staff started to worry, he said.
“We were looking for other jobs…there was something fishy. They were not very open with us about what was going on.”
US agents investigating the case believe VBS bosses may have engaged in “double-billing”, where it would bill both US authorities and private US insurance companies for things like Covid-19 tests. The company is also accused of over-billing private healthcare providers.
Moore apparently spent a lot of time in SA and discussed “purchasing a 10-bedroom house”. Millions of rands in payments were also tracked from US accounts to SA banks.
In June last year, while Moore was in SA, he told staff in a Zoom meeting that all employees in the US were furloughed. He said the VBS South Africa office would continue to operate and staff would continue to receive their salaries.
But none of them did, said the source.
“They told us to go home. We must come back only when the money is in.”
Thereafter, the company has paid them nothing, despite repeated promises that money was on the way from the US.
The source said once or twice Moore would hold a meeting on WhatsApp or Teams, telling them they must “hang in there”. He claimed he was there to “change our lives”.
“He said he was working with his accounts department …they are not sleeping, day and night.” Staff were promised bonuses for being patient.
Searching for assets
In September last year, some employees approached the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA) in a last-ditch bid to force VBS to pay. By this time, the company had apparently closed its branches in Cape Town and Durban.
At a CCMA hearing in the Western Cape, two former employees won an enforcement order against the healthcare group, which failed to appear at the hearing.
The commissioner ruled that “I am satisfied the employees have established their claims for monies owed to them”.
Two of the staff managed to get three months of outstanding salaries after the sheriff raided the VBS offices in Johannesburg and attached assets, but only a handful of the others received anything.
Some had been worried that the company would refuse to pay them anything if they took legal action, while the source said others were persuaded to sign a document saying they would get one month’s salary if they stopped their legal claims.
Some who had approached the CCMA and won their cases received nothing, as the sheriff couldn’t track down anything to attach.
“There was no one, VBS was gone,” said the source.
News24 article – SA staff unpaid, US agents probe healthcare group for fraud (Restricted access)
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