Woman Charged in $200K Medicare Mattress Fraud

PITTSBURGH  (Sept. 18, 2013)—A medical equipment saleswoman has been indicted on charges she defrauded Highmark’s Security Blue Medicare Program out of $200,000 by submitting bogus claims for air mattresses for patients who didn’t really need them.

Online court records do not list an attorney for 62-year-old Mary Monica Wilson-Lefler, of Sewickley, Pa., who was indicted by a federal grand jury on Tuesday.

Prosecutors say she worked with two medical equipment companies—who are not named—to buy the mattresses, supposedly to benefit bedridden patients at risk for bed sores and skin ulcers.
Authorities say Wilson-Lefler faxed phony information about 83 patients in four long-term care facilities—which are also not named—to doctors who signed off on the mattress orders.
Wilson-Lefler will be arraigned by a federal magistrate in Pittsburgh on Oct. 10.