A convicted South Florida healthcare executive whose 20-year prison sentence for Medicare fraud offenses had been commuted by former President Donald Trump was arrested on domestic violence-related charges in Miami Beach over the weekend.
Philip Esformes was booked Sunday — his 56th birthday — on charges of tampering with a victim or witness and criminal mischief involving property damage of $1,000 or more, according to Miami-Dade Circuit Court records. Both felony charges are related to domestic violence, records show.
A judge on Monday issued a stay away order against Esformes, who was arrested Saturday evening. He remained in custody at the county jail on Monday, but a bond was submitted for his release, according to records. It was not clear whom Esformes may have threatened or where the alleged domestic violence incident occurred; he was arrested by Miami Beach police, records show.
Esformes’ former wife, Sherri Beth, had filed for divorce in July 2015 and it was finalized in October 2020, according to court records. Esformes is still listed as the owner of the family’s home at 5077 North Bay Road in Miami Beach. Property records show it is valued at $7.5 million.
According to the New York Times, Esformes is at least the seventh person granted clemency by Trump who has been charged with new crimes after receiving a second chance.
In February, Esformes pleaded guilty to stealing millions of dollars from the taxpayer-funded Medicare program, capping a long-running healthcare fraud case marked by the commutation of his initial 20-year sentence by Trump in late 2020. Before the presidential commutation, Esformes had served 4-1/2 years of his prison term.
Esformes was convicted of fraudulent billing at his chain of skilled-nursing and assisted-living facilities in Miami-Dade in a $1 billion Medicare fraud case that accused him and others of recycling patients through a local hospital, paying bribes and obstructing justice. He was spared returning to prison as part of a plea agreement with the Justice Department. But he was ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars in financial penalties reflecting his ill-gotten gains from the healthcare fraud conspiracy.
The plea agreement was reached in February between the Justice Department and Esformes in one of the nation’s biggest Medicare fraud cases. Despite Trump’s commutation of his initial prison term, Esformes faced a potential retrial on the main healthcare fraud conspiracy count and five related charges from his first trial in 2019 because a Miami federal jury deadlocked on those offenses while finding him guilty on 20 others.
The Justice Department vowed to retry Esformes as prosecutors negotiated a plea deal behind the scenes with his defense lawyers.
U.S. District Judge Robert Scola highlighted the “unusual” circumstances of Esformes’ healthcare fraud case, revealing for the first time what he thought about President Trump’s commutation of Esformes’ sentence after he had only served 4 1/2 years, including his time in detention after his arrest in July 2016.
“I can’t say that I was not disappointed when his sentence was commuted by the president,” Scola said, while pointing out that under the Constitution a president has the prerogative to grant clemency petitions.
Then, referring to a mob boss’ famous line in the Godfather II movie, the judge noted: “As Hyman Roth said, ‘This is the business we have chosen.’ ‘’
The prison issue
Before deciding to go along with the plea agreement reached by federal prosecutors and Esformes’ defense team, Scola asked a Justice Department lawyer why the agency was not recommending any more prison time for the defendant. Esformes pleaded guilty to a healthcare-fraud conspiracy charge involving bribery that carried up to 20 years in prison.
Prosecutor James Hayes acknowledged the unusual situation but pointed out that Esformes was pleading guilty to the “top count” in the indictment and paying nearly the entire restitution and financial judgments owed to the U.S. government. Hayes also noted the “finality” of the case, saying there would not be a costly second trial on the hung counts from the original trial.
Under the agreement, the other five hung charges from Esformes’ first trial alleging bribery payments, money laundering and obstruction of justice were dismissed by prosecutors with the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami. Esformes, who was living in Palm Beach County at the time, won’t have to serve additional prison time under the terms of the deal.
However, he was required to pay $5.5 million in restitution to the federal Medicare program. He was also required to pay at least $14 million from the sale of real estate and other business assets toward his outstanding forfeiture penalty of $38.7 million — the amount of money he received from Medicare through fraudulent billing at his Miami-Dade chain of assisted-living and skilled-nursing facilities between 2010 and 2016.
After the hearing, federal prosecutor Daren Grove said that Esformes had already paid the restitution amount and was expected to pay at least $30 million toward his forfeiture obligation.
READ MORE: Prosecutors will retry Miami healthcare mogul on hung charges from first fraud trial
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