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.
His pardon from dumps commuted his time in jail from 20 to the four years he was in prison from 2016 to 2020 as time served, but didn’t overturn or cancel his convictions.
The 20-year conviction and prison sentence came from 26 criminal charges, 20 of which stuck, 6 of which were jury deadlocked.
DOJ decided to retry the 6 charges that never went anywhere so that he got a new sentence not covered by his earlier pardon, but after pleading guilty to a single charge, for which he’ll receive no more sentencing or trials, the DOJ accepted the new plea deal and dropped the remaining charges.
Such a light sentence for major conspiracy might be because he’s informing on others, or maybe the DOJ wants extra convictions to look better but doesn’t want to spend money on another trial so it’s willing to take a plea deal.
We don’t have the data on why the deal was made yet, but the complexity of the situation comes from the prison sentence being pardoned but the convictions and deadlocked charges standing.