Grapevine Billing: The Consultant Who Ran Arriva’s Write-Offs

Grapevine Billing and Consulting Services Inc. and its owner agreed to pay $50,000 in the Grapevine Medicare fraud settlement over allegations that their work for Arriva Medical caused false diabetic-supply claims. The outside consultant helped set the rules for collecting patient balances, writing them off and billing Medicare. For someone inside reimbursement, the revealing part is how much of that business he could direct without being the supplier.

The Justice Department announced the civil settlement on February 14, 2022. A later criminal case concerned the same consultant’s billing work through Grapevine Professional Services for brace suppliers.

An Outside Consultant Running Arriva’s Reimbursement

The government alleged that Grapevine’s owner effectively served as Arriva’s head of reimbursement from at least 2009 through 2011. Through his wholly owned consulting and billing firm, he oversaw the supplier’s reimbursement department, developed policies for collecting beneficiaries’ copayments and submitted diabetic-testing-supply claims to Medicare.

The settlement announcement identifies Grapevine and its owner as based in Stuart, Florida. Their client, Arriva, supplied diabetic testing equipment and supplies. The government’s account put the consultant inside the decisions that determined what patients owed and what Medicare would be asked to pay.

The civil allegations covered free meters, routine copayment waivers and replacement meters billed for patients who had already received a Medicare-paid meter within the previous five years. The government alleged that the free meters and routine waivers were kickbacks to beneficiaries, and that Grapevine and its owner knowingly caused the resulting false claims.

For the kickback allegations, the period ran from April 2010 through the end of 2016. That is the conduct the government said the consulting work helped produce: a supplier could offer a patient equipment without collecting the patient’s share while continuing to seek Medicare reimbursement.

An employee following a write-off policy sees the decision as part of the day’s work. This case reaches the person who designed that policy and could tell the department to carry it out.

The Supplier Settlement Left the Consultant’s Case Open

Arriva and its parent Alere agreed to pay $160 million in August 2021 to resolve the claims against them. The Justice Department’s corporate settlement announcement expressly left the consultant and Grapevine as defendants in the continuing case.

The later consultant settlement resolved that remaining part of the action. The Justice Department said it based the resolution on its analysis of Grapevine’s financial disclosures. The consultant who allegedly ran the write-offs settled for a sliver of what his client paid.

A former employee in Arriva’s Antioch, Tennessee call center brought the original whistleblower case under the False Claims Act. The United States joined it. The supplier’s customer-facing operation and its reimbursement policies became parts of the same civil case, even though the corporate defendants and the outside consultant settled separately.

Five Billing Practices the Consultant Acknowledged

The Justice Department’s settlement announcement describes sworn testimony in which the consultant admitted personally directing write-offs and creating collection policies. The five practices show both individual decisions and rules that employees could apply repeatedly.

1. Discretionary copayment write-offs. He acknowledged writing off customer copayments and being able to tell someone on his team to write a balance off.
2. Regular use of that authority. He said the write-offs happened probably every week.
3. Mass write-offs of Medicare denials. He acknowledged bulk write-offs for meters that Medicare would not pay for because the patients were ineligible. These concerned denied meter claims, distinct from the patient’s copayment on a paid claim.
4. A small-balance rule. He created Arriva’s routine policy of not sending bills to customers who owed less than $5.
5. Complaint-driven adjustments. He developed courtesy adjustments that waived copayments when customers complained about their Medicare coinsurance obligations.

Medicare Denials Became Write-Offs

The consultant’s testimony about mass write-offs of denied meter claims describes the reimbursement side of Arriva’s replacement-meter billing. The government’s amended complaint in the Arriva case alleged that the supplier billed Medicare for replacement meters even when staff expected a denial.

His small-balance rule also reached recurring orders. According to the complaint, Arriva wrote off small balances for each date of service before sending an invoice or letting them accumulate with balances from later orders. A threshold applied to every shipment can keep a recurring customer’s obligations from ever growing into a bill the supplier pursues.

The Separate Grapevine Brace-Billing Case

The later Grapevine Medicare fraud case concerned knowingly fraudulent claims for braces. In its June 24, 2025 criminal conviction announcement, the government reported that the consultant had been convicted following a jury trial. The account identifies his billing company as Grapevine Professional Services.

According to that criminal-case announcement, he operated the company from approximately 2016 through April 2021 and used it to submit fraudulent reimbursement claims for back, knee, wrist and shoulder braces. He submitted thousands of claims for durable medical equipment suppliers that engaged Grapevine for billing services. They included Liberty Bell Medical, Skye Medical and Priority Medical, which he and a family member owned and controlled.

The announcement says he knew the claims were fraudulent and continued submitting them repeatedly. Across the suppliers whose claims he submitted, Medicare received over $38 million in bills and paid over $12 million.

In Arriva’s civil case, the government described the consultant’s authority over one supplier’s collection policies and claims. In the later criminal account, it described a billing business submitting claims for several suppliers, including companies under the operator’s control.

What Evidence Is Needed to Report Medicare Fraud?

Our whistleblower experts work with you to connect the reimbursement policy, the patient’s balance, the Medicare claim and the person directing the work. The Arriva documents show those connections through collection rules, sales emails, denied claims and the consultant’s account of his own instructions.

A billing employee may know who approved a batch of adjustments. A reimbursement manager may know who established the threshold for sending invoices. A call-center employee may know what happened to a balance after a customer complained. Those views can explain how a policy became a repeated decision on individual accounts.

The same attention to the business behind the claim matters when an outside service bills for several suppliers. An insider who knows which companies the billing operator controls, which accounts it services and who directs submissions can explain relationships that a supplier name alone does not show.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

You Know Who Set the Billing Policy

If you saw who ordered the write-offs or kept false brace claims moving, speak with our whistleblower experts about the billing decisions you saw. We build the case with you and bring in Medicare fraud whistleblower lawyers who understand outside billing operations and supplier relationships. We stay beside you through the process to build your strongest Medicare fraud whistleblower case.