Metro

Viet vet gets $15M for baring Medi-fraud

They scammed the wrong guy!

A frail but feisty wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet with muscular dystrophy scored a $15 million whistelblower’s reward after uncovering a massive Medicaid fraud scheme — with the help of his trusty calculator.

“From my wheelchair, on a ventilator and oxygen, I have spent the last seven years in this fight. Sometimes, the good guy wins,’’ said plucky Richard West, 63, of Tuckerton, NJ.

“The more I uncovered, the more pissed off I got that someone was making money on my disability . . . It’s people like me that will keep these big companies honest,’’ he told The Post of the sensational case, which resulted in the largest financial settlement in home-health-care-fraud history.

The savvy senior said he first smelled a rat when he went to the dentist in 2004 — and was told his Medicaid benefits had maxed out.

West returned home and scoured his own, meticulously kept records, discovering that Maxim Healthcare — the agency that provides his home-health aides — had billed Uncle Sam for care he never got, including coverage by nurses he’d never met.

West said he spent months trying to convince various government agencies to investigate the matter. But it wasn’t until he hired a lawyer, Robin Page West (no relation), and filed a federal lawsuit that authorities finally got involved.

Maxim — which has 300 offices in 40 states, including New York — was eventually busted for netting a total of $61 million in phony reimbursements.

Under terms of a deal unveiled this week, Maxim, which is partly owned by Baltimore Ravens owner Stephen Bisciotti, agreed to fork over $121.5 million in reimbursements and penalties for the phony Medicaid claims and another $8.4 million to the Veterans Administration.

The Maryland-based company was also slapped with a $20 million fine. The feds added that they will be overseeing its operations for two years.

Under federal law, Richard West was entitled to a percentage of the payback the company was ordered to fork over.

Of his newfound millions, the disabled vet, who’s on a portable ventilator, said he plans to spend it wisely.

“I need a new van, my house needs work, and I’m going to make donations to charities for the disabled,” West said.

Maxim CEO Brad Bennett was contrite in a statement, saying: “We take full responsibility for these events.”

Robin Page West said she hopes that the outcome of the case will spur others to blow the whistle to root out similar scams.

“Money is just draining out of Medicare and Social Security because of fraud,” she said. “One way to stop it is for the beneficiaries on the front lines to step up and say something because they are the people getting these benefits” and have the most to lose.

The lawyer praised her client for pursuing the case.

“He is extremely tenacious and has an unfailing moral compass. He knows what’s right and what is wrong and he is extremely patient, and has an incredible perspective on life.”