The former CEO of a Farmington Hills, Michigan, health care business has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a complaint alleging the business defrauded Medicare and Medicaid, the U.S Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said Friday. 

According to the complaint, a Southfield, Michigan, woman was the CEO of Advance Visiting Physicians, which provided home health care services to Southeast Michigan residents. She operated the business with her late husband, who was a physician and the owner of the business. 

The complaint said that her business submitted claims to Medicare and Medicaid seeking reimbursement for medical home visits by "unlicensed and unsupervised physicians trained in foreign countries."

A man who earned his medical degree at a college in the West Indies, but was not licensed to practice medicine in the U.S., was hired by Advance Visiting Physicians in 2016 after coming to America with permanent resident immigration status, according to the court document.

The man was hired to work as an "assistant to the physician," though he realized soon after starting at the position that he was expected to see homebound patients without a physician, the complaint said. He and four other unlicensed foreign medical graduates would allegedly see around 12 patients a day, five days per week. 

The physicians would indicate on a form they filled out after each visit that the woman's husband had done the visit.

According to the attorney's office, the settlement amount and payment structure were based on the woman's ability to pay. 

Anyone who knows about potential fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement can report it to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at 800-447-8477.