NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — How often do you get notices from your health insurance company that you just toss aside?
Well, you may want to pay closer attention to those statements going forward.
That's because scammers now have figured out a way to bill you and your insurance company for medical services and products you've never received.
"And I started looking at this (insurance statement) and I thought, 'This can’t be right,'" Kenneth Smith said.
When he got the statement from his insurance company, a charge for $6,600 worth of medical supplies from the SNKL Services Corp. immediately caught his eye.
"And I was like, 'Wait a second, I didn’t have any supplies in September, especially not $6,600 worth,'" Smith explained.
Smith wasn't the only one SNKL Services tried to charge for fake supplies or services, according to United Healthcare.
"This was a scam," United Healthcare's Suha Assi told NewsChannel 5 Investigates. "To date, we have received approximately 500 calls on our fraud line just from this company."
"It just makes me really mad. It really does, and I keep thinking 'despicable.' You know who does this?" Smith said of the scam.
Here's what we know about SNKL
The company just incorporated in California at the end of October, which was more than a month after it supposedly had sent Smith his medical supplies.
We found the company headquarters supposedly are on the second floor of a building in Brooklyn, New York. The owner of the building told NewsChannel 5 Investigates the apartment tenants have nothing to do with SNKL.
And while we did everything we normally do to track people down, our search for the company and its CEO turned up nothing.
In fact, the Better Business Bureau now has issued an alert about SNKL Services Corp. and gives the company an F rating after receiving multiple complaints and finding it impossible to find an actual company.
"They’re (the scammers) just looking for a quick way to make some money to steal people's ID and their medical information. I don’t think very much of them. I’ll tell you that," Smith said.
This all comes just months after United Health Group, the parent company of United Healthcare was hacked in a massive cyberattack that led to a data breach affecting some 100 million people's personal information.
The insurance company refused to comment or even speculate whether this has anything to do with that attack, but the company is now encouraging everyone on its website dedicated to the hack to "Be on the lookout and regularly monitor your explanation of benefits statements (or EOBs) and check for any unfamiliar activity. "
"You should always review your documents and see if it makes sense to what you requested from the visit you rendered and if it doesn’t make sense, the first step you should always do is to call the number on the back of your health ID card immediately," Assi said.
So, the next time you get a statement from your insurance company, make sure you carefully review it.
"I bet a lot of people get these in the mail and don’t look at them," we suggested to Smith.
He agreed.
"A lot of these times I’ll get these EOBs and I’ll just open the envelope and throw them out," Smith said. "I won’t do that anymore. I’ll start going through all of them now."
How to protect yourself
It's a good idea to do this whether you're a United Healthcare customer or not.
If you ever see anything that looks suspicious or you don't recognize on a statement, make sure you report it immediately. You'll want to call your insurance company. And you can find the number to call on the back of your insurance ID card, no matter what provider you have.
Because of data breaches like this, your medical information may be out there being sold to bad guys who not only will try to get money from your insurance company, but they may also send you fake bills, hoping you won't question the charges and will just send them a check.
So, make sure you carefully review any bills you get.
