A 21-year manhunt for an admitted fraudster is over.
The Office of the Inspector General at the Health & Human Services Dept. announced Monday that the man at the top of its most-wanted list had finally been arrested.
Robert Allen Lopez pleaded guilty to Medicare fraud charges in December 1995, but jumped bail and fled the country before being sentenced.
He outran federal investigators for 21 years until last week when, OIG said, he was apprehended at Miami International Airport.
The OIG statement said Lopez was convicted of conspiring to defraud Medicare by filing false claims so he and his partners could avoid currency-reporting requirements by utilizing only cash.
The criminals claimed more than $4 million. Lopez opened companies under fake names in Miami and used them as cover to file false compensation reports.
In 1995, he fled America and illegally took his two children with him. His 10-year-old son was discovered four years later wandering around Cancun, Mexico. U.S. authorities later reunited him with his mother.
OIG agents, in cooperation with the State Department Diplomatic Security Service, said it caught Lopez after a tip-off that Lopez was living under a fake name in Nicaragua.
