Clarity Diagnostic Laboratories: Call-Center Scripts, Doctor Chasing and Paid Test Orders

Clarity Diagnostic Laboratories, Mercury Laboratory Services, Opteo Laboratory and Signify Laboratory submitted over $174 million in Medicare claims and received over $55 million in reimbursements through a genetic-testing fraud scheme that bought doctors’ orders, according to the Justice Department’s account of the criminal case. One owner, based in Kansas City, Missouri, ran the laboratories in Louisiana and Texas. The Justice Department reported in December 2025 that he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

The July 2022 criminal indictment alleged that the scheme ran from approximately November 2018 through July 2020. It described two ways to obtain the signature: pay a remote doctor who had no treating relationship with the patient, or repeatedly press the patient’s own doctor to sign. The sales call, the doctor’s signature and the laboratory bill can tell very different stories about the same test.

How the Call Center Sold a Medicare Genetic Test

The Medicare-approved, no-cost genetic test pitch began with a claim that the patient had already ordered the test. According to the indictment, a contractor identified as Call Center 1 told beneficiaries they had “ordered a no-cost cancer test online.” Its script invoked Medicare by promising that “the Medicare approved lab that will handle your testing sample will be Clarity Diagnostics.”

The script also told beneficiaries that Medicare was willing to pay for the technology to save lives and urged them to return the package quickly. The indictment alleged that marketers obtained the orders and DNA specimens through aggressive calls that deceived beneficiaries.

After callers obtained medical information, purported telemedicine doctors were paid to sign orders electronically. In many cases, the indictment alleged, those doctors were not treating the beneficiaries, had not consulted with them and did not follow up after testing.

The indictment describes cancer genetic testing as looking for gene mutations associated with future cancer risk, rather than diagnosing whether someone currently had cancer. Samples could come from saliva or a cheek or nasal swab. Laboratories could run several gene panels and bill multiple procedures.

The testing rules described in the indictment required a treating physician who used the results to manage a patient’s specific medical problem. A call-center promise that Medicare would pay skipped over that clinical purpose. For a laboratory employee, the requisition and the returned sample were therefore only part of the story. Who wanted the test, who assessed the patient and who would use the result were just as important.

From Gift-Card Surveys to Paid Doctor Signatures

Gift-card survey leads supplied Opteo’s alleged recruitment operation. The indictment said a separate contractor, Call Center 2, bought contact information from people who had completed online surveys about cancer and medical history, often in exchange for retailer or restaurant gift cards. Staff then called those people to sell genetic testing, sometimes several times a day.

The callers were instructed to read a preapproved script verbatim. They said they represented Opteo Laboratory and called themselves “health advisors,” despite having no medical training. The call center then arranged for telemedicine doctors to sign the testing requisitions.

The indictment also alleged that the owner and others built a coding framework for telemedicine doctors and selected a comprehensive gene panel to maximize Medicare reimbursement. Marketers, rather than medical professionals, added diagnosis codes to requisitions. The owner and another operator allegedly encouraged codes that would “maximize reimbursement.”

This gives someone inside the business a more specific question than whether a doctor signed the form: who put the diagnosis on it? A signed requisition can carry a diagnosis selected by the sales operation.

Doctor Chasing Went After the Patient’s Own Physician

Doctor chasing for genetic testing used the patient’s existing primary-care physician as the intended signer. The indictment alleged that Signify used this approach for cardiovascular genetic testing, while Opteo billed for cancer genetic testing.

Under Signify’s alleged model, marketing companies faxed or otherwise delivered a proposed prescription to the beneficiary’s primary-care physician. Call centers repeatedly contacted the doctor’s office to coax the physician into signing it. The sale still began outside the practice, but the requested signature came from inside it.

The indictment alleged that the owner circulated cardiovascular survey questions for call-center representatives, including whether a beneficiary experienced an irregular heartbeat. The screening questions also sought the identity of the primary-care physician so marketers could pursue the order.

The two paths leave different records. In the remote-signature path, the question is what contact and clinical assessment preceded the electronic approval. In the doctor-chasing path, the proposed prescription, incoming fax and repeated calls show who initiated the request and what the practice was asked to approve. A practice employee who handled those calls may know something the final signed order does not reveal.

The Laboratories Changed, the Billing Continued

The indictment alleged that the laboratories mainly served as billing businesses, sending specimens to reference laboratories that actually performed the tests. That separates the company named on the Medicare claim from the laboratory doing the bench work. It also explains why an employee at a testing facility might see specimens without seeing the sales arrangements behind them.

Clarity allegedly lacked the ability to perform the cancer genetic tests it billed. The indictment said its claims omitted the billing modifier that would have disclosed that another laboratory performed the testing. It also alleged that the owner received complaints from beneficiaries who had not been treated by a physician or had not received results, yet directed Clarity to keep billing.

According to the indictment, Mercury came under Medicare review and received a payment-suspension notice. The operators then stopped billing through Mercury and moved the billing to other laboratories. Opteo began billing Medicare for cancer genetic testing from a nearby office suite in the same building as Clarity.

Ownership records presented another version of the business. The indictment alleged that the owner’s control was missing from enrollment records for Clarity, Opteo and Signify. A family member signed Mercury’s purchase agreement and Medicare enrollment application even though the defendant owned and controlled the laboratory.

The company on an enrollment form, the person directing billing and the laboratory performing the test were separate questions. Following only the laboratory name would miss the decisions connecting them.

What the Marketers Were Paid to Deliver

The alleged payment arrangements priced the referral of a signed order. The indictment described marketers receiving a fixed amount, such as $75 per order, or a percentage of Medicare reimbursements. Mercury allegedly paid marketers approximately 50% of its Medicare receipts in exchange for referrals. The indictment alleged that those marketers, in turn, paid telemedicine doctors to sign orders.

Beyond Medical LLC and Blue Horizon Consulting, LLC allegedly helped move the money. The indictment identified them as purported marketing companies and alleged that the operators routed Medicare proceeds through their accounts to marketers, call centers and telemedicine companies. Sham contracts described the payments as marketing or account-management services.

The indictment put payments to Call Center 1 at approximately $8.5 million from January 2019 through August 2020. Across the operation, it alleged at least $16.8 million in kickbacks and bribes for beneficiary referrals and doctors’ orders. The payment terms explain what those sums bought: access to patients and signed testing orders that could generate Medicare bills.

The HHS Inspector General’s July 2022 telemedicine alert describes the wider business pattern: companies recruiting patients and practitioners, paying for reviews or signatures, and passing orders to downstream buyers. The payer for the doctor’s work can be different from the patient or the insurer covering an encounter. The order itself has commercial value because another business can bill from it.

In this case, the indictment traced that business through the call-center pitch, the diagnosis codes, the signature, the claim and the referral payment. The contract’s service label told only one part of that story.

A Signed Order Can Hide the Missing Consultation

In a separate civil case concerning MySpecialistMD orders, the government’s complaint alleged that a physician approved genetic tests without speaking to beneficiaries. That allegation reflects the same gap described in the laboratory indictment: a signed order without a patient consultation.

What Evidence Is Needed to Report Fraud?

Evidence of genetic-test order fraud connects what the patient was told, what the physician actually did, what the laboratory billed and what triggered the referral payment. Here, the indictment makes those connections unusually concrete: scripts invoking Medicare, purchased survey leads, repeated calls, marketer-added diagnoses, signed requisitions, sham service contracts and billing moved between laboratories.

A call-center employee may know which script callers had to use and whether the patient had ever requested testing. A practice employee may recognize the fax and repeated signature requests. A laboratory or billing employee may know which company performed the test, which company submitted the claim and who ordered billing to continue after complaints. An employee handling payments may know whether the invoice tracked orders delivered or Medicare receipts.

A 2024 Rutgers University Law Review analysis, Plausible Cause: Connecting the FCA and AKS in the Context of Health Care Fraud, argues that businesses have an informational advantage because they hold their own records and understand their billing processes. It also points to companies’ own analyses as evidence connecting payments with business generated. That is the value an insider can bring here: explaining what a referral invoice or diagnosis field meant inside the operation.

We work with that knowledge to connect the sales process to the orders and claims it produced. A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

You Know How the Order Was Obtained

If you know who wrote the script, supplied the diagnosis or paid for the signature, speak with our whistleblower experts about the test orders you saw. We build the case around your knowledge of the operation, bring in healthcare fraud whistleblower lawyers who understand laboratory referrals and telemedicine orders, and stay beside you through the pursuit of a recovery.