A federal jury has convicted a 42-year-old Annapolis man of healthcare fraud and money laundering for fraudulently billing Medicare more than $18 million for unnecessary or unperformed laboratory tests during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland, Patrick Britton-Harr, owner of Provista Health, fraudulently billed Medicare approximately $18.7 million for respiratory pathogen tests over a six-month period in 2020. Medicare paid more than $7.2 million of those claims.
Prosecutors said Britton-Harr offered COVID-19 testing services to nursing homes across the country before submitting claims for additional, expensive respiratory tests that physicians had not ordered and patients did not need.
Evidence presented at trial showed that he directed inexperienced employees, including high school and college-aged interns, to bill Medicare for the additional tests whenever a COVID-19 test was performed. He also submitted claims for tests supposedly performed at his Arizona laboratory after the facility had closed, including tests billed for nursing home residents who had already died.
According to prosecutors, Britton-Harr used proceeds from the scheme to fund a lavish lifestyle, including purchasing a $112,500 Porsche 911 and making monthly mortgage payments of approximately $25,000 on his waterfront mansion in Annapolis.
The jury convicted Britton-Harr of five counts of healthcare fraud and one count of transactional money laundering. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for each count. A sentencing date has not yet been announced.
The conviction follows a separate federal jury verdict in June 2026, when Britton-Harr was found guilty of six counts of wire fraud in connection with a $15 million private-jet charter fraud scheme.
