A businessman from North Carolina has been found guilty of masterminding a massive $60 million fraud in the healthcare sector. His scheme involved using stolen identities, counterfeit doctors’ orders, and fraudulent billing practices.
James Shuford Price admitted to engaging in unlawful kickback payments to funnel referrals to his laboratory. He also confessed to submitting a falsified federal tax return for the year 2022 and neglecting to declare additional income streams, as highlighted in a statement from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Price could be sentenced to a maximum of 13 years behind bars, alongside a $500,000 financial penalty, and will undergo three years of supervised release. Additionally, he is required to compensate various government entities, including the California Medical Assistance Program (Medi-Cal), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the IRS.
The fraudulent activities were conducted through Golden Star Labs, a Los Angeles-based facility he owned, which purported to specialize in testing for respiratory viruses.
Between August 2023 and June 2025, Golden Star Labs filed claims exceeding $96 million for COVID-19, RSV, and flu tests, which prosecutors revealed were ordered under stolen doctors’ credentials.
Price paid more than $17 million in illegal kickbacks to so-called collectors, who supplied bulk quantities of “bogus” test samples, according to prosecutors. Then, the lab would bill Medi-Cal and Medicare for testing them.
But Price didn’t stop there. He then ordered the lab to create fake contracts that promised his collectors a fixed fee for services, when, in reality, they were getting paid per sample.
During the first six months of the scheme, approximately 96 percent of Golden Star’s claims came from the stolen identity of an out-of-state doctor.
At one point, Price temporarily stopped the operation to “clean up the billing issues,” said prosecutors, before starting up again.
By the final months of the scheme, 92 percent of the lab’s claims stemmed from authorizations tied to the stolen identities of five different doctors.
During the investigation, federal authorities seized more than $6 million in assets connected to the scheme.
U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle called the scam “lowdown” and “dirty.”
“We have a message to fraudsters who steal federal dollars,” Boyle said in the press release. “We will catch, prosecute, and imprison you. Cheaters. Never. Win.”