DOJ: Jim Biden associate conspired with alleged mafia boss to defraud Medicare

Prosecutors said a business associate of Jim Biden conspired to defraud Medicare alongside an alleged leader of the Colombo crime family in a brief filed Friday in federal court in New Jersey.

The government’s accusation is likely to intensify scrutiny of the ties between President Joe Biden’s brother and the associate, Mississippi businessman Keaton Langston.

The Justice Department named Langston as a co-conspirator in the ongoing fraud case just three weeks after congressional investigators grilled Jim Biden about his relationship with the Mississippi businessman. In the course of a previous prosecution, the Justice Department identified a defendant in the fraud case, Florida businessman Thomas Farese, as a high-ranking member of the Colombo crime family, according to court filings.

Last month, POLITICO reported that Jim Biden had accompanied Langston, the son of a longtime friend, at a May 2017 meeting at which they pitched the services of Langston’s medical lab testing business to a hospital chain. The hospital chain, Americore, has become a focus of the impeachment inquiry led by House Republicans that is probing potential links between the president and his relatives’ business dealings.

A spokesperson for Jim Biden, Brian McDonough, did not respond to a request for comment. Though the government has identified Langston as a co-conspirator, he has not been named as a defendant in the case. He did not respond to requests for comment made to a phone number believed to belong to him. Attorney Casey Langston Lott, a cousin of Langston’s who has represented Langston at times, said he was not in a position to comment and did not respond to a follow-up request for help contacting Langston directly.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Joe Biden has said he never discussed his relatives’ business dealings.

POLITICO's investigation found that Jim Biden leveraged his brother’s name to promote Americore and that his involvement with the hospital chain began with the May 2017 meeting, which also included Langston's father, Joey Langston.

POLITICO also obtained emails from Joey Langston to Jim Biden, Keaton Langston and others related to the planning of partners’ meetings of the lab services business, Fountain Health.

In a prepared statement delivered last month to impeachment inquiry investigators, Jim Biden described a summer 2017 breakfast meeting in Florida with Keaton Langston, Joey Langston and Americore’s CEO in which he learned about Americore’s business model.

But in his interview with the congressional investigators, Jim Biden distanced himself from Keaton Langston. He said he had no role in Fountain Health and was not involved in any companies with Keaton Langston, according to a publicly released transcript.

In the interview, Jim Biden also testified about his relationship with Joey Langston. He described the elder Langston — a disbarred trial lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2008 to conspiring to bribe a judge — as a close friend and fielded questions about their financial ties.

Investigators said Joey Langston — who sat for his own impeachment inquiry interview last month — testified that he loaned Jim Biden roughly $800,000 and received roughly $400,000 back, according to the transcript. A lawyer for Jim Biden, Paul Fishman, told investigators those figures are “not inconsistent with what we believe,” according to the transcript.

Following their initial contacts with Americore, both Keaton Langston — who is listed as the sole member of a Fountain Health, LLC in Mississippi’s corporate registry — and Jim Biden went on to work with the company, which at its height operated a handful of hospitals across the eastern half of the United States.

Jim Biden helped Americore gain regulatory approval to acquire a hospital in Pennsylvania and worked to raise money for it from overseas investors.

Meanwhile, Fountain Health and a successor company with a similar name performed lab testing services for Americore hospitals.

But in late 2019 Americore went bankrupt, leaving political and legal controversies in its wake.

In early 2020, the FBI raided the Pennsylvania hospital as part of a Medicare fraud investigation that is separate from the New Jersey case.

Two years later, a business partner of Keaton Langston’s, entrepreneur Daniel Hurt, pleaded guilty to his role in the Pennsylvania fraud case. As part of that scheme, Hurt received kickbacks from the hospital, which in turn, received tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent reimbursements from the government, according to his charging document.

Keaton Langston has not been named as a defendant in the Pennsylvania case, but Americore’s bankruptcy trustee accused him in a civil complaint of conspiring with Hurt to defraud Medicare along with the same Pennsylvania hospital. Keaton Langston denied wrongdoing, and the case settled.

Then on March 14, federal prosecutors pursuing the New Jersey fraud case filed a brief that identified Keaton Langston as Co-Conspirator 1 in alleged schemes involving compound pharmaceuticals and medical braces.

A 2021 indictment in that case describes Co-Conspirator 1 as a resident of Mississippi who held interests in pharmacies.

The indictment also states that Co-Conspirator 1 received kickbacks for his role in arranging orders made to a medical equipment company part-owned by Farese, the alleged Colombo family leader, and another alleged co-conspirator, Pat Truglia, that resulted in improper reimbursements from the government.

Farese is named as a defendant in the case and has pleaded not guilty. Truglia pleaded guilty to his role in the medical brace fraud in 2021, according to the government brief and 2021 charging document.

The Justice Department identified Farese as the “consigliere” of the Colombo family, one of the original five families of the American mafia, in the course of a previous money laundering case in the Eastern District of New York. Federal prosecutors also identified Truglia as an associate of the Colombo family in a 2014 sentencing letter.

Lawyers for Farese and Truglia did not respond to requests for comment. Jim Biden has not been accused of wrongdoing in the Medicare fraud cases.